Dual pci express question

[Abomination]

Thsi is probably a noob question. Down the track i woukd love to build a powerfull gaming system and notice that quite a few mobo's these days can have 2 or more graphics cards. My question is, do 2 graphics card still only run 1 monitor but with double the speed and performance?

 

[DonNagual]

There are two pathways to go for running dual graphics cards. SLI and Crossfire. SLI is nvidia's setup, and crossfire is ATI's.

When you setup dual graphics cards, you CAN hook up more than one monitor if you want to of course, but one of the main reasons for the dual graphics card setups is to increase the gaming performance. It is not anywhere near DOUBLE the speed/performance actually. For the most part it depends which game it is you are talking about. Some are programmed to utilize dual cards, and some are not.

Here is some good reading on SLI/crossfire: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/26/nvidia_is_in_the_crossfire/page13.html

And here are the benchmarks for SLI setups vs. single card:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/02/vga_charts_viii/

 

[Abomination]

Thanks for that ... will take a look at the links

 

[Abomination]

Excellent links and a great read...will have to bookmark toms hardware

Will say one thing though..looks like i will have to save some pennies or wait for the poularity to increase and the dollars go down