can i sli two nvidia gtx 295 on a ASUS P5E3 Deluxe Wi-Fi motherboard.

Alsisgevat · 15 Nov 2011

As Zahl said, i think the best and cheapest option for you is to get a nvidia 790i sli motherboard. like the

Asus striker II, it uses the 790sli chip but goes further and uses adds ultra to it,which as far as i know allows for faster ddr3 ram. I think getting a sli790 motherboard and 800wat psu would be best, also the striker II is atx form,so it will fit your case( i think all mid towers are atx or m-atx, just make shore of that and get a 790i that is ither m-atx or atx if you prefer. But getting new motherboard,cpu,gfx cards and so on is more fun...but verry xpencive and a waist since all you need is a motherboard and maybe a new psu.

Zahl · 15 Nov 2011

Well, in all honesty I would just run a single 295 or maybe sell both 295's and grab a single monster of a card. Your other options are not worth it at all and dual cards from either side will require a new power supply.

shanks69 · 16 Nov 2011

hi zahl and alsisgevat

yeah think its best not to spend nothing more. going to keep my machine as it is and keep the other graphics card as a spare. its a power full enough machine but i do have one more question, i want to keep the spare card in the tower for safe keeping. can i switch the power off going to the spare card and if so, how do i do it? through bios??? or.....

guys, thanks a million for your support and info. sound for that.

thanks again

tom

Alsisgevat · 16 Nov 2011

I have a strong feeling Zahl is gonna correct me here, but i think if you just dont give it power by not attaching the wires from the psu would be good enough. But i would suggest rather removing the card, the openspace will give your first card the breathing room it needs, there is no point in blocking that cards airflow with a nother that isn't working.

And i didn't help much but your more than welcome! And hope you enjoy years of gaming on your machine.

thefabe · 17 Nov 2011

I would definitely recommend removing th card not in use.
Fabe

Zahl · 17 Nov 2011

That would be nice but you can't power down the card completely. It will still get enough power through the pci-e port to keep it alive and complaining that things are unplugged. It will be safer in a box in the closet, trust me

Edit- If you really-really want to keep in the case and get some use out of it, you could dedicate it to physx processing. However only one gpu can be used for physx so half of the card would be sitting there doing nothing. A total waste in my honest opinion but i'm throwing it out there. You could also use it to drive additional displays if so you wished.

Sub Styler · 17 Nov 2011

You need the SLI patch

HyperSLI (Enabling SLI on non-sli motherboards) - techPowerUp! Forums

HOWTO: SLI on a non-SLI Motherboard (GTX5xx compatible 1.0 final released!)

Then you can run SLi on a crossfire board! CAUTION, requires a reasonable level of experience in using patches, unsigned drivers and following instructions carefully.

Zahl · 17 Nov 2011

Very nice. I'd probably give that a shot

shanks69 · 19 Nov 2011

Sub Styler said:

You need the SLI patch

HyperSLI (Enabling SLI on non-sli motherboards) - techPowerUp! Forums

HOWTO: SLI on a non-SLI Motherboard (GTX5xx compatible 1.0 final released!)

Then you can run SLi on a crossfire board! CAUTION, requires a reasonable level of experience in using patches, unsigned drivers and following instructions carefully.

hey sub styler, thanks for your info. to be honest, im just a beginner in all this hi tech stuff about computers especially with gaming. can you have a peep at my spec at the start of the thread and would installing this bugger up my machine? could you give me a step by step how to go about this.

thanks alot for putting a little light on it.

thanks

tom

Sub Styler · 20 Nov 2011

Well everything you need is in the first link to be honest.

You already have the cards in and the drivers on so it's just a case of downloading and installing HyperSLI (latest)

From what I understand it uses you CPU's virtualisation technology to make the SLI bridge, This is enabled by default but you could always check the BIOS just to make sure it's enabled (Processor features). The side effect of using this will mean the CPU's virtualisation technology will no be visible to other applications but this is not biggie if you are not virtualising.