sli quad channel

[Ostruthers]

hi guys i was wondering, in coclution to the 'APU' releaseing if the old motherboards running LGA1155 will be able to handle running 4 graphics cards instead of only 2 in sli or crossfire

i have been thinking alot about the sli and why they have 4 slots on these motherboards but you only use 2 and if you use all 4 will they be compatble or will it work asif you are runnung duel sli 'Graphic cards' if you will? ,
or wil it be asif all 4 slots act as 1 graphics card?

due to the nature of the 'APU' soon releasing the status of a graphics card wil no longer be needed ??? wil we be able to succeed or keep up the high graphics by adding more cards to our older pc's or will we need to just like before buy brand new PC parts as in the new LGA that came out?

would love to be kept up to date in your latest issues of the 'APU' legendary hipe that has been sturring up and yet sudenly its all silent...

please keep in touch

PC nurd:
Ostruthers

[hamin_aus]

JeffK, is that you

[StarBound]

Er...

On CPU graphics will never be as good as a dedicated graphics card. As tech progress you might reach that point where say the intel i50 is the same speed as a gtx580 but only because your ram runs in 16 channel ddr8 10ghz.

But remember the xbox 360 and ps3 are both running on chip graphics with the ps3 cell having a built in 7800gtx. If the graphics capability reaches the point where I can buy my cpu and have current gen mid-range or top of the range graphics on it at 60-120fps on max detail then I won't mind going on chip. But as the tech currently is I don't see myself swapping my gpu for an apu that is compareable to tech from 5 years ago.

[Ostruthers]

ty and is it possable to run 4 sli cards with full compatibilty or will in run in duel sli channels?

[StarBound]

I don't understand your question.

At current the max SLI you can go is 3-way SLI. How it works is each card renders one frame. Hence tripple buffering, 3 rendered frames. To get to run 3-way SLI you need a motherboard with enough PCI-E slots, and full slots. After that you need a 3-way SLI capable card. At current I think the only 2 cards that can do 3-way is the GTX480 and GTX580. And third thing is your motherboard will be scaling down your pci-e lanes. 1x16 will become 2x8 and then either 3x8 if your lucky or 3x4 if you have one of those substandard motherboards.

Crossfire works differently and as far as I know all 5-series and 6-series Radeons can do quad crossfire. Again it depends on your motherboard. Remember that the more cards going onto the board the less space there is for cooling and that will play a huge huge roll as even with a good cooler and an open slot between cards my 560ti's reached shockingly high temps that they never got when running a single card.

2 more things to point out. You motherboard MUST say if it supports ATI crossfire and/or Nvidia SLI for the multicard setups to work. After that the better your cards the better your performance. Multi-GPU setups only work well when they are capable of rendering decent frame rates on their own. So quad crossfiring say 6550 will be worse off than simply using a single 5770.

And last thing, you cannot combine your APU into SLI/Xfire. Not as far as I know.

[Sojourn]

Star, at the possible expense of being wrong... please don't feed the troll.
You are committing the same terrible crime here, as when a 3 year old points to a car engine part and asks you what it is and what it does.

[CyberGecko]

I reckon the quad sli (4 cards) will depend on the motherboard but I don't see why it couldn't be done. Only problem not so many boards out there that would support something like that.

One I know of is the Asus P6T7 WS SuperComputer LGA1366
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_ ... rComputer/

Multi-GPU Support Supports NVIDIA® Quad-GPU SLI™ Technology
Expansion Slots 6 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (triple x16 or six x8)
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16

It's not great gaming board but it should do what your asking.

Easiest quad setup would probably be 2x HD6990 or 2x gtx590 even though the gtx590 has heat issues. HD6990 Xfire i recon would be easier setup.

Anyways, GTX580 tri-SLI is better than 2x HD6990.

Just stick to 3x GTX580 (2 slot cards) or 2x Asus ROG Matrix GTX580 (3 slot cards)

Lastly, you could always get 2x Asus ROG MARS II cards in SLI Only about R20,000.00 each