2 nVidia graphics cards (not using SLI) on a motherboard with crossfire?
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2 nVidia graphics cards (not using SLI) on a motherboard with crossfire?
Will it work?
From what I've read there is no problem running one nvidia card on a crossfire motherboard, but not much information running two cards.
Some context: I currently have a Core 2 Duo on a motherboard with an nForce chipset supporting SLI. I have 2 nVidia 9400 graphics cards not in SLI mode driving my 3 monitors.
I'm toying with the idea of upgrading the CPU and motherboard (maybe the RAM if I go for DDR3), and am leaning (back) towards the AMD camp, however most of the motherboards for AMD CPUs that have 2 PCIe x16 slots also have Crossfire.
Why not try it and tell us?
The basic theory is: You put a section for each bit attached (video cards, monitors) in xorg.conf. There may be issues if nvidia have done different things inside their proprietary versions of libs. You will have 2 drivers called 'nvidia' unless you have 2 of the same card. mebbe call one 'nvidia2' and rename it.
In all this bad weather in Europe we could use a laugh. Try it - it might work. It shouldn't explode anything.
The reason for the question is I don't want to spend £220 to £300 on a motherboard/CPU/RAM to find out that for some weird and exotic reason my nVidia graphics cards won't work as 2 individual cards in a motherboard that supports Crossfire and have to buy 2 new ones.
Personally, most people who stuck at it seem to get going, but not always as they wanted. I saw enough trouble to settle for one monitor. Have you 2 cards of the same model? On the same Bus? Using the same driver? These all matter, you know.
You're misunderstanding me, probably my fault so I'm sorry.
My current setup comprises of a Core 2 Duo CPU, a motherboard with an nForce chipset, 2 GeForce 9400 graphics cards driving 3 monitors. See "Conroe" in the link in my sig for the exact hardware. This all works absolutely perfectly.
Now I'm getting a bit restless and fancy updating the CPU, motherboard and if needed RAM. I need to know if a motherboard with Crossfire support will handle 2 nVidia graphics cards not in SLI. I might be being overcautious here, years ago I used AGP and PCI graphics cards together with out any problems. However, I haven't found any article/post where this setup is used.
If the hardware plugs together, is compatible and exposes the 2 graphics cards as 2 separate controllers to the kernel, then the software configuration is trivial, it's a case of booting a live cd, mounting my OS filesystems in a chroot environment and rebuilding the initrd so that the correct modules required to boot are present.
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