SLI Capable

[town]

How do you know if a graphics card is SLI capable.
e.i. I've just ordered an SLI motherboard and am now looking for 2 cards to go into it on a

[Mees]

2X X800

[cheesegrater]

X800 is Crossfire, not SLi.

For

[town]

It is a multiscreen rig so I need three outputs.

[congo]

SLI might not be what you are after by the sound of it.

[town]

care to elaborate congo?

[ctjoyce]

Matrox Cheaper and easier.

Cheers
Cameron

[PisTon]

I wouldn't go 3 screens without Quad SLI or something IMO. Matrox triple head 2 go looks good

[ctjoyce]

I wouldnt recomend quad SLi to anyone for any reason. Regular SLi would be able to do 4 monitors just fine, however dual 7900GTs arn't in his budget. The Matrox should be just what he needs.

Cheers
Cameron

[town]

The matrox works out at

[ctjoyce]

Well yes, yes they would. Grab 7600s if you can, if not then 6800 Ultra, at the least a 6800GS. Dont get 2x6600GTs.

Cheers
Cameron

[congo]

Well, the primary purpose of SLI isn't to provide two displays, it's to provide combined speed on a single display. There are cheaper options methinks.

[town]

How would you go about it Congo?

[richardd43]

Although you ordered an SLI capable board with the 2 PCI-E slots you do not necessarily need SLI capable boards installed.

Once you activate SLI you only have 1 monitor active. (Might not be true of all boards but my Gigabyte board reverts to a single monitor and it has 4 monitors installed)

[congo]

How would you go about it Congo?

I'm not the one to ask .

Cameron suggested a Matrox card which I'm assuming has a dual display output.

You can use a PCI video card in a PCI slot as a second card.

You could possibly use onboard VGA as a second display if your bios allows addon cards and onboard to run at the same time.

Some setups require interfacing with FSUIPC.

JBaymore would know exactly what to do, as would quite a few guys in the homebuilt cockpits section of the forums.

I'm sorry town, I missed the fact that you already ordered the SLI board, that's fine, but you don't require the SLI compatible video cards for what you are trying to do, but you may as well get SLI compatible cards for performance useage when you want that aspect of SLI.

Simply ask the vendor if the card is SLI compatible to find out. Or post the card of interest here so we can check if you can't find out for some reason.