Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
• A PCIe motherboard with an SLI-compatible chipset and two PCIe video slots de-
signed for SLI operation
• Two NVIDIA-based video cards with SLI support
Note
Originally, you needed to use two identical cards for NVIDIA SLI. With the introduction of
NVIDIA ForceWare v81.85 and higher driver versions, this is no longer necessary. Just as
with the AMD CrossFire and CrossFire X multi-GPU solution, the cards need to be from the
same GPU family, but they don't need to be from the same manufacturer. You can obtain up-
dated drivers from your video card maker or from the NVIDIA website (
www.nvidia.com
)
.
Inmostcases,aspecialbridgedeviceknownasa
multipurpose I/O
(MIO)connectsthecards.
The MIO is supplied with SLI-compatible motherboards, but some SLI-compatible cards
don't use it.
To learn more about SLI and for a list of SLI-compatible GPUs and nForce motherboard
chipsets, visit NVIDIA's SLI Zone (
http://slizone.com
).
Figure 12.16
illustrates a typical SLI hardware configuration. Note the MIO device con-
necting the cards.
Figure 12.16
NVIDIA SLI installation using a multipurpose I/O (MIO) bridge device.
AMD CrossFireX
AMD's CrossFireX, an improved version of ATI's CrossFire multi-GPU technology, uses
three methods to speed up display performance: alternate frame rendering, supertiling
(which divides the scene into alternating sections and uses each card to render parts of the
