I need some clarification on SLI vs Crossfire. What they are and what they do and the advantage of doing so? Next, what is a dedicated Physics card? How can I use a dedicated physics card? Can I have either a SLI or Crossfire setup in conjunction with a dedicated Physics card? Now in mu current computer setup can I add a dedicated physics card and would it be worth do so. I tried doing some Googleing but I'm not sure what I should be looking for.
SLI and crossfire are the interfaces for nVidia and ATI respectively. They allow you to link two or more Graphics cards as if they are one card. they share the Ram and processing load. The motherboard, PSU and cards have to support the interface for it to work.
The dedicated physics card is when someone uses a nvidia card that has PhysX just for the physics processor. Usually, a card handles all the games commands and code in one processor. The nVidia cards that have a PhysX core, instead seperate the code that is used for PhysX to one processor designed to handle the math of the Physics environment. You can have two cards and one of them is used just because it supports PhysX.
It looks like your mobo: ASUS M4N78 PRO - motherboard - ATX - GeForce 8300 specs and Motherboard specifications - CNET Reviews
Supports nVidia SLI "NVIDIA Hybrid SLI Technology Support"
It has onboard nVidia graphics "NVIDIA GeForce 8300 Shared video memory (UMA)"
I dont know if Hybrid is real SLI.
But you might be able to use two nVidia cards in SLI for it I think.
If so,one can be for high end game processing and the other a lower less expensive card that has PhysX.
Thanks for the replies Thorsen. So with my curent setup, do you recommed adding a physics card and if so, I only have 2 PCI slots open, what type of card should I look into. If installed how does my computer determine what card installed is used and in what order to do what processing? Right now I have ATI Radeon 4770 GPU in my PCI E 16 slot.
I have not done an SLI setup. My next build will probably be though. There are alot of people on this thread that do though. And I have seen some people spec's that say they have ATI and nVidia cards (im pretty sure of this) I am hoping someone else who has experience with SLI or dual dedicated cards will see thread.
Quote