Multi-Monitors and SLI

[MetalX]

Anyone heard anything about Nvidia possibly adding multi-monitor support for SLI any time soon? I just purchased a second 8800GTS 512 and SLI'd it up with my old one, but to my dismay, I couldn't use both of my screens anymore. Not in SLI mode anyway...

Why would Nvidia do this to me?

 

[direwolf007]

Anyone heard anything about Nvidia possibly adding multi-monitor support for SLI any time soon? I just purchased a second 8800GTS 512 and SLI'd it up with my old one, but to my dismay, I couldn't use both of my screens anymore. Not in SLI mode anyway...

Why would Nvidia do this to me?

There is a workaround I used with my 8800GT SLI to make use of two more monitors alongside my SLI configuration. I had an identical board, as well.

The idea revolves around a third GPU (Anything will do, so a cheap 8400GS would work fine. I used my old EVGA 7800GT) and tricking the driver. If you want, I can dig up the link to the workaround from somewhere.

You cannot do it with only the two SLI'ed cards, and I haven't heard anything about additional monitor support. This is quite annoying, since there is a serviceable workaround and dual GPU cards like the 9800GX2 are essentially SLI, but with multi-monitor support. Both mean it is possible, so I don't know why it was not implemented.

 

[MetalX]

I know you can do it that way, but both of my 8800s have dual slot coolers, so they block all my other expansion slots except for a PCI-E 1x slot and single PCI slot which is occupied by my sound card... Last I heard, almost no video cards are made for PCI-E 1x.

I just don't understand why I can't run dual monitors with SLI, especially considering that with both cards there I have 4 monitor ports.

And as you say, it can be done on the 7950GX2 and the 9800GX2...

 

[direwolf007]

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/e...268-348724-64268-3454917-3454918-3673477.html

Quite expensive, but it is a PCI-E x1 interface.

 

[MetalX]

Eww... that's way too expensive to be worth it. But thanks anyway for looking.

Plus, I don't think my power supply could handle anything else really. It's 4 years old, only 460 Watts with 33A +12v, and it's running my overclocked Core 2, 2 8800GTS 512s, 4x1GB sticks of DDR2, my hard drive, 2 DVD drives, my mouse, keyboard, and my Nostromo.

 

[direwolf007]

The 8400GS ain't a power hog, but I think your system is already close to riding the limit with a PSU this old.

Not that it matters, those PCI-E x1 and PCI cards are way too expensive to use, unless for a specialized (and silly !) system like the one in my sig.