Can I SLI my video cards without the original bridge?

November 23, 2008 10:06 PM

Where can I get an SLI bridge to connect two nVidia GeForce 7600 GTs?

My schweet box (tm) has an Asus P5B Deluxe that I got a year and a half ago. It runs great, but unfortunately the motherboard package did not include the necessary SLI bridge. I contacted ASUS and they were completely unhelpful. I know I've let this sit a long time, but is there a way I can purchase a compatible SLI bridge for my motherboard/video cards, and how much am I looking at spending? Will I get a performance boost for Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead?

posted by burnfirewalls to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: That's an Intel chipset motherboard, which cannot support nvidia SLI - Only ATI Crossfire. The X58 chipset is remarkable as it's the first non-nvidia chipset that supports SLI.
posted by Rendus at 10:25 PM on November 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Yeah, no SLI support for that board. Speaking as someone who ran two 7600 GTs in SLI, you're not missing that much. Maybe about a 20% bump in performance. A single 8800 gt card will destroy a 7600 SLI setup.

So, pickup a cheap 8800 or cross over to the dark side and go with not one, but two lousy ATI cards.
posted by wfrgms at 10:49 PM on November 23, 2008

Best answer: From what I recall, you can use modded drivers to enable SLI support on "any board" with older nVidia cards (like the 7xxx series you mentioned).

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=106212

particularly this post for the driver:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2550721&postcount=613

YMMV
posted by liquoredonlife at 12:52 AM on November 24, 2008

Seconding wfrgms. I cant think of any time a SLI setup is warranted, especially with yesterday's technology. Real world performance is something like a 20% increase. You'll get a huge performance increase by moving up to a cheapo 7900 or mid-range 8800GT. Newegg has an 8800GT for 149.99 right now. You can get a used 7900GS for half that on ebay.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:42 AM on November 24, 2008