I searched for the phrase you mentioned, and have read up on the problem you brought up; for a single monitor setup, there probably would be a significant issue involved. However, I have a multi-monitor setup, and as such, don't think it'll affect me, as one of the posters pointed out. It is something to keep in mind. Thanks for the heads-up.

Happy to hear that. Indeed I have limited experience with multi-monitor setups and would not pretend to really know about the difference between Mosaic and Twinview or how they interact (if at all) with SLI, but I did not find success stories for the combination Linux, SLI (or Crossfire for that matter) and gaming, hence the concern that you might have been in for a disappointment. I don't want to take this too far off-topic, so, best of luck with the setup!

As a gamer, I never found that SLI is a solution I would try, simply because not every game runs faster with SLI, which means that just investing the money you would need for the second card into getting a better card is a more reliable solution. Not to mention that with modern games in most cases the bottleneck isn't the GPU anymore, but the CPU. For example, with the just released Grid Autosport in 1920x1080 using the "Ultra" preset for graphics option the GTX980 Ti is not even 5 FPS faster than my trusty old GTX760.

Thanks. I got the hardware in today, and am experiencing a multitude of unrelated issues; at first, I suspected that it was related to the new hardware, but recent events have led me to believe that it is just a result of having one of those days from hades. I'm taking a break right now, both to let my CPU and myself cool down; my CPU because I suspected it overheated because I left the case cover off too long, and myself because my patience is at an end, and I'm afraid I'll break something before too long if I continue on as I have been.

I'll update when I get some major progress made.

Indeed it was just a series of unfortunate events. The CPU cooled enough for me to be able to boot into level 3, where I immediately ran the NVIDIA Linux installer, which installed without incident. Configuration of X on Nvidia cards, however, is much different than on Radeon; something I'll have to learn how to do to adjust my multiple monitors to my heart's content. So, right now, I can truly say I'm relatively pleased with the progress made. I'll see to the rest tomorrow.

SLI doesn't really do that much unless the application is coded to specifically use SLI features such as load balancing and other GPU to GPU handoffs. It's nice, but a good quality single card is more than enough for most stuff out there.

Technically, you are correct (I have verified this elsewhere), but this is kind of a personal indulgence for me. As I have stated earlier, I have always wanted to play with SLI since the days of the Voodoo2, but I have never been able to afford it until now. And gaming isn't the only application dual cards can be used for. I look forward to what I can do with these bad boys.

Unfortunate indeed! Before you do anything else I think you really need to address these thermal issues. Simply put, heat is the enemy of electronics in general and specifically digital electronics begin to round off and drop integers when heat strained. The single biggest bang-for-buck you will ever spend is on cooling. Even with hotter running AMD processors there is no good reason they shouldn't idle happily at 40C or less. A proper aftermarket CPU heatsink and fan(s) combination costs less than $50 USD and will deliver minute-by-minute superior performance plus all your equipment will last longer. Most modern high performance video cards come with top notch cooling so it is rare anymore that one has to resort to aftermarket coolers (like Arctic Cooler a few years ago) so all you have to do is provide proper CPU cooling and good airflow out of the case -generally one sucking at at lower front and one blowing out at higher back. This only changes slightly between cases with bottom mounted PSUs vs/ top mounted PSUs since the bottom mounts are usually compartmentalized.

In any case, get that stuff cooled! You will never regret it.

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@enorbet: For the life of me, I cannot get my secondary monitor (hooked to the VGA output of the second card) to initialize. I have tried hand-modifying the xorg.conf file to add a second Monitor, Device, & Screen section(s). I've even tried the UseInt10 option, as specified in Nvidia's documentation. Still, no luck. I have yet to get it to turn on. Funny thing is, the first time I tried configuring the Nvidia driver, it came up, no problem (without additional configuration). Then I must have done something to screw it up, and ended up borking the graphics; had to reinstall Slackware from scratch. The secondary monitor has not come up since.

AMD's configuration software was loads easier to configure than this, setting resolutions and monitor positions was a snap; all I had to do was configure it how I wanted it, and then reboot. For all of AMD's shortcomings, this was one advantage I now sorely miss after having taken it granted for so long. This was on almost the exact setup I'm on now, except for the fact that Nvidia apparently still expects me to get my Linux-foo on to try to do what AMD's software did for me, first time, every time. The hardware is top notch, and the driver updates are superb, but the configuration utilities remain primitive. The installer and configuration utilities that Nvidia provides have essentially gone unchanged since last I remember using an Nvidia card, and that was back in 2002, when I still had my GeForce 4 MX card, and when manual configuration was the order of the day. Now, I don't mind hand-editing configuration files; if I did, I wouldn't be running Slackware. My problem is that I still can't get the result I want after much Googling, editing files, and rebooting. I'm about ready to pull my hair out (Figure of speech; my hair is falling out already).

If there is any light you can shed on this situation, I'd be most pleased to hear it.

Just be careful with some of the high-end CPU fan coolers: if the fan(s) is/are side-mounted on a tower heatsink you might end up having little or no airflow over the capacitors surrounding the socket on the motherboard. The basic heatsink and fan supplied with many Intel processors, facing down, can actually be preferable if you don't have case fans to keep these caps (and the memory nearby) cool as well.

Well, after much more Googling, and swearing at the primitive facilities Nvidia provides, I have come up with a solution. The man page(!) of nvidia-xconfig says there is an -a option to enable all gpus. Without delay, I executed the command. The pain doesn't end there, though; after rebooting, the secondary monitor finally(!) comes up, but in plain VGA mode. I have to manually edit the Monitor section to enter the horizontal & vertical refresh rates (which I had to look up for the monitor model in question, a Dell 2005FPW). After hand-held editing that, I went down to the Screens section, where I added a Modes option under the Display subsection. Since the monitor's native resolution was 1680x1050, that went first, followed by the standard lower resolutions. After saving the file and rebooting one more time, the resolution was at last right. By then, it was getting late, and I decided to call it quits, having reached a significant milestone.

Man, I really did have to do some Linux-foo to get this done. Nvidia, you really could take a page out of AMD's playbook, and make configuration of multiple monitors a snap.

Did the contents of the /var/log/Xorg.?.log give you any interesting information?

Alas, I didn't even think to check the contents of the Xorg log file, as I don't make it a habit to check log files unless it is pointed out to me in an error message. But I was able to figure out the solution nonetheless, and that makes me a very happy man.

I use a dual monitor setup on my GTX760 and I easily could set it up using the nvidia-settings dialog. Doesn't that work in case of a SLI setup or are there other difficulties with that program that I didn't face?

I have a monitor hooked up to each of the cards. If I'm reading you correctly, you have multiple monitors hooked up to one card. I think TwinView handles that. What I was wanting to do was a wee bit different. I don't think Nvidia foresaw my kind of setup; if they did, (I think) they would have made provision for setting it up. Still, AMD's configuration utility had no problem with a similiar setup.