SLI or crossfire
 

i have some newbie question for you.

what does SLI stand for??

can you SLI or crossfire diffrent cards together?

can you SLI or crossfire low profile card with a non-low profile one?

is it complicated to set up?

is it worth it?

Let me google that for you

-Scalable Link Interface
-No
-Errr. not likey
-not complicated
-that is relative to many variables that must be considered. Please be more specific.

SLI = Scalable Linkage Interface

can you SLI or crossfire diffrent cards together?
Nope, so gtx560ti with gtx560ti, hd6850 with hd6850

can you SLI or crossfire low profile card with a non-low profile one?
depends on the distance between your pci express slots, but you can find a pci express extender like shown in this image: http://www.vistax64.com/attachments/...ity-4890cf.jpg

is it complicated to set up?
Nope, you can find many videos/ tutorials online to help you out

is it worth it?
Depends, you do get increased performance but at the expense of micro stuttering, and not every game fully supports crossfire/sli. The best plan is to pick up a more powerful card see if its enough, if not pick another one up when the prices go down

Out of curiosity does it give such a thing as a low profile graphics card that is SLi or Crossfire capable?

I've been running both Sli n Tri Sli for the past 4 yrs or so, never experienced the Micro Stutter, this is more isolated to Quad SLi (2xdual GPU Cards).

It is MOST certainly worth it for 1920x1200 Res or higher. As for some games not supporting SLi, again prettyuch another myth, yes brand new release games may go as much as a week or so before a new SLI Profile is incorporated into a Driver release, particularly for a very popular game.

Sorry cannot comment on ATI XF....ask Arinoth about ATI Drivers ;)

RJ, you will rarely run into micro-stutter if you're running the high end cards, which you seem to always be. Its the lower end cards with the lower amount of vRAM that gets full and you have the two cards communicating to each other.

As for as it goes with 6xxx series for AMD, absolute garbage drivers, at least for the 6870s in crossfire in eyefinity, as well as 6970s in crossfire in eyefinity (and not in it). I'd say go with nVidia if you'd like reliable performance for your games, AMD if you want to pay less and have spotty drivers.

i mean by that, can you SLI a GTX260 with a 560TI
or a 6870 with a 6950

^^^^^ no you cannot

In all fairness I'm referring to the constant complaints over the past few yrs (Evga Forums) of the "Micro-stutter Bug" associated with all Quad SLi set-ups, beginning back when the GX2's were released and carrying on to the GTX 295's...these cards also have ample VRAM....

I also ran SLi 260's (768 MB), 9800GTX (512 MB) and my wifes Rig has 560 ti's (1GB)...no micro-stutter.....as for lower end nv Cards with less VRAM no idea.

As far as stuttering, they tend to effect all cards, some less then others, the X2 cards, tend to suffer the least provided they are using proper communications bridges and the like.

The 2k series, 4k radeons, and lower end card of most generations, tend to use crappier bridges, tend to have bottlenecks in their specs compared to their bigger brothers sorta speak, and so stuttering tend to be a major issue for less costly cards more often then not, as well like some pointed out, Crossfire X or Quad sli, 4 cards or 2 X2 style cards, doesnt matter, they need enough pci-e communications, enough Vram, or enough other factors, 9/10 they just run out of Vram or bandwidth and tend to not be able to push the info as fast as they need to. High settings, hige resolution, or not enough cpu crunching power can really make this alot worse and therefore noticeable, like a lawnmower trying to chomp through 5ft grass, it tries, but doent like to :P

I know that with some Lucid stuff you can run multi-vendor and multi-gneration cards together, however performance was not always what it could be, example, gtx260 with gtx480, radeon 4870 with gtx460 and such, their drivers for the lucid chip at the time were not that good, and I believe MSI was one of the few that made a motherboard that used the chip that allowed this.

for sli/crossfire it all boils down to drivers, and the card, if you are using 2 of the same card one is LP and one is standard height, no problem, however if one is high clocked then the other, the faster card declocks to= the slower card, finally if I recall correctly it doesnt matter if its say an MSI card with a EVGA card, but it does matter that they are the same as in Vram amount, generation i.e a 560ti with 560ti not 560ti with 560 non ti etc.

AMD 6k series crossfire scling is superb compared to 5k and 4k series, however thier last 4 drivers have been veyr bad with newer games, I suppose, cannot expect a company as small as they are to be able to do everything like Nvidia can or Intel can. My answer has always been, less problems with 1 card, you want the best available, be prepared to pay for it, sometimes in more ways then one, we may not like it, but thats the way the cookie crumbles :P