SLI enabling two different cards.

[aptalent]

Hi everyone.

I own an ASUS CG5290, and it came with an ASUS Rampage II Gene motherboard, an ASUS GTX 260 896mb graphics card, 9 gbs of ram, and an i7 running at 2.66.

My video card was acting up so I decided to purchase a BFG GTX 275 896mb GDDR3 and picked up a 900w power supply. Then as I was installed it, I noticed that my PSU said something about being SLI ready and I looke up on to that.

Can my computer dual run 2 different cards? An ASUS GTX 260 and a BFG GTX 275?

Or do they need to be the same model type of cards?

Thanks! :D

 

[stormy13]

Both yes, in SLI no. Nvidia cards have to be the same model to work in SLI.

One thing you can do is to use both and if so desired run up to 4 monitors off of the two cards. Another is to use the 275 as the primary card, and use the 260 as a dedicated Physx card.

 

[aptalent]

Ohhh.

How would I go on about enabling the 275 as a primary?

 

[MDA400]

put it in the first PCI-E slot (the one closest to your CPU) and just plug your monitor into that one. simple as that.

When running a physx application, if you have 2 different GPU's (like the ones you have) you can select the card to solely run the physx engine for that game and let the other do the graphical work.

 

[aptalent]

Thanks. Does it matter if the primary video card is located closest to the CPU?

Because both cards were picked up and show under Device Manager. I set the GTX 260 as the physx card under the Nvidia Control Panel and it seems to be working fine.

 

[MDA400]

Thanks. Does it matter if the primary video card is located closest to the CPU?

Because both cards were picked up and show under Device Manager. I set the GTX 260 as the physx card under the Nvidia Control Panel and it seems to be working fine.

In compatibility cases, you should always have the fastest card in the first slot on your motherboard, however it shouldnt make too much of a difference if you just have the monitor plugged into that card.

Say you put your card in the second (or third) slot with no other card in the system and try to turn on your pc, the motherboard POST test tells you to switch the card to the 1st PCI-E slot. I dont know why this happens as every GPU in the system shares the same IRQ number, but do that for future reference.

Its ok if the Device Manager shows both cards. Nvidia's Unified Driver Architecture allows one driver to install over multiple card to enable features such as SLI, Multimonitor support and Physx.