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SLI question

mushtafa

mushtafa

mushtafa

Soldato
Joined
17 May 2013
Posts
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Location
West Sussex, UK
I'm currently running a EVGA GTX550 ti. I'm highly considering buying another one and running them SLI. Does the other card need to be identical?
Same manufacture, clock speed, memory, etc?

Thanks
 
They dont have to be from the same manufacturer or have the same clocks. Ideally both should have the same memory, but there is a hack to enable two cards with different amounts of memory to work in sli.
 
OK thanks, I'll do my best to get the same card first, but at least I now know I can get another brand.

Another question; I know I won't see double performance, but what can I expect? 50% extra?
 
Depends entirely on the game tbh, reading a few card reviews will show the sort of increases that can be had on the major game titles with sli.
 
mushtafa said:
OK thanks, I'll do my best to get the same card first, but at least I now know I can get another brand.

Another question; I know I won't see double performance, but what can I expect? 50% extra?
Click to expand...

often it will be close to double, assuming you are running at settings that don't require more than the 1GB of VRAM that you would have available
 
You are probably better off just spending money towards a 7950 or 760/760ti/660ti/670.

You'll be vram limited from the offset, have a noisy hot and power sucking system!
 
I keep looking to get another card, but money is a bit tight at the moment. I had a quick look on that auction site and I may get another 550 for less than £40 if I'm lucky.


Posted from Overclockers.co.uk App for Android
 
What is VRAM? Is that the amount of memory on the card? If one card is 1GB, than using 2 cards would give me 2GB correct?


Posted from Overclockers.co.uk App for Android
 
yes VRAM is the memory on the card

no, VRAM isn't shared, each card needs it's own copy of everything to run, so having 2 x 1GB still only equals 1GB that can be used

having said that, if you sell your existing card for ~£40, you wouldn't get a better card for £80, so the path you are taking is the cheapest best route for you right now until you could expand your budget to something like £200
 
As others have already pointed out by getting another 550Ti you'd certainly see a big jump in performance (depending to an extent on the resolution you're running at), but you may well run into memory limitations, especially with more recent games.

£200 would get you a really very good card such as the GTX760 or HD7950 (once you've sold the bundled games) that would more than double your current performance and would avoid you running into memory issues for a good while to come, but I accept that it's substantially more than you could spend to go 550Ti SLI.

Even at the £150 point there are some great cards to choose from such as the HD7850 2GB or the GTX660 2GB.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, but really can't spend much on the PC at the moment. I may have to leave it for the next few months, so may just go ahead and SLI it for the time being.

Another question; are all SLI bridge things the same? I've seen lots of brands and style of bridge.


Posted from Overclockers.co.uk App for Android
 
The sli bridge will have been supplied with your motherboard. There are various lengths and ones for using more than two cards. Rigid styles used to be common on asus boards, but the ones ive got lately have all been flexible types. Im currently using a black rigid one from an old asus socket 939 board. Only because i think it looks better than the modern flexible brown ones.:D
 
I understand what a lot of you are saying. BUT, I'm not going to beat the performance of dual GTX550 cards with £40.
I bought this PC second hand, so haven't got the bridge. Am I right to assume all Gigabyte bridges will be the same?

@Jony27 The OC app is useless.
 
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