9800GX2 and second nVidia vidcard: NO SLI

J

johngvo

Weaksauce
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Oct 3, 2004
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109
In a different thread, I asked for suggestions on a cool, quiet running video card that I can use to drive a 24" Dell, which I use as a second monitor. My primary monitor is a 30" Dell. I would not be gaming on the 24" at all so performance wouldn't be an issue. I would then set my 9800GX2 into Mulit-GPU mode to take advantage of the onboard SLI on my 30". It makes sense, theoretically, right?

Well, I had a 7800GT in my old machine so I put that into my current rig. After Vista detects it, the setting in the Nvidia control panel that allows you to set multi-GPU vs. multi-monitor disappears. So I guess this means that you can NOT use the 9800GX2 in SLI mode when your second vid card is not the same.

I wonder if i could set the 9800GX2 in SLI mode if my second video card was an ATI card. Anyone try this? I think it is such a waste to have a 9800GX2 and not use it in SLI mode, but multiple monitors is a must for me.
 
Yeah I had the same problem with a 7950gx2 and a pci 6200. If your running vista all of your cards need to use the same driver. XP should work fine with an ati card and a nvidia card. Ive never tried it with sli though.
 
Crap. Ok then, I guess we just keep waiting for Nvidia to release drivers that will allow you to use SLI and multiple monitors. Sucks!
 
Have you tried to use a USB external graphic card? eVGA has something like that.
 
I found this on another forum. Someone said you can use a 9800GX2 in SLI mode if you use an nVidia 8400Gs as your second card.

"Keep in mind SLI gets disabled with dual monitors on a 9800gx2 (unless you buy a cheapo 8400gs). "

Anyone know if this is true?
 
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