Bif secret?MSI 7125 (NF4 ultra) can do SLI

Alright , folks, X'mas gift here
SLI what?
have you thought NF4 ultra also can do SLI ?
How? Here is the deal! Don't know if other brand can do this BUT MSI NF4 Ultra does!

let's see how:(only need to use the driver :6675)
get it on:

http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/neo4/1.JPG

board:

http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/neo4/3.JPG

M/B ：MSI K8N NEO4
MEM ：G.SKILL TCCD DDR600 256mb X2 DUAL@2.5-7-4-3
VGA ：6800ULTRA PCI-E SLI DRIVER:6675
HDD ：HITACHI S ATA 7K250 80G
POWER: ZIPPY 600W + X-CONNECT 500W
OS ：WIN XP PRO SP2

Configuration:
CPU SPEED:2900mhz
Vcore:1.50v
Vdimm:2.8v
@DDR600 2.5-7-4-3
VGA:400/1100

see the Mainboard info showing @ CPU-z? It's MS-7125(NF4 ultr)
http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/neo4/5.gif

http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/neo4/7.gif

ok, let's see the comparison:

Real SLI 3d05 @ MSI Diamond:

http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/neo4/8.gif

then watch the NF4 ultra as SLI mode:
watch that CPU-Z mainboard info, MS-7125 is NF4 ultra.
The result is pretty close to what MSI 7100 performed as SLI mode.

http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/neo4/4.gif

that's basic for now, I will my detail test up on Sunday!

Wow... only 200 points difference even though the top card is in a PCI-E 1x slot.

All I can say is well done Onepagebook... you've managed to surprised us once again.

Very interesting indeed.

Nice discovery Onepagebook, is it worth it though and what is the price difference between Diamond and nf4?

:D about 40~45 bucks difference;)

by the way, that's PCI-E 2x not 1x ;)

This is really weird... all you've done is put one videocard in the PCI-E 16x slot and one in the PCI-E 2x slot.
AFAIK the chipset isn't doing anything 'special' to make this combo work.
So what I'm wondering is, are the current Intel motherboards capable of running SLI?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RaptorRaider

This is really weird... all you've done is put one videocard in the PCI-E 16x slot and one in the PCI-E 1x slot.
AFAIK the chipset isn't doing anything 'special' to make this combo work.
So what I'm wondering is, are the current Intel motherboards capable of running SLI?

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ya, just like I said, it's easy to work out.:D
BTW..that 's PCI-e 2x!

Intel? do not even wanna bother with it! :stick:

very good indeed
strangely though..the same board reviewed at t-break doesnt seem to have the pcie x2 slot.????

Asky MSI has 2 different boards coming out, one is SLI other is just single slot.

Interesting find. Now, how do you like your zippy? :) Got myself 700W one and in love with it. Talk about non fluctuating rail on my system configuration. (well can't verfiy with o-scope as I don't have one but dmm shows great numbers :P)

Nice find man.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by =[PULSAR]=

Asky MSI has 2 different boards coming out, one is SLI other is just single slot.

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ya iknow they are coming out with 2 different boards..
one is the K8N Diamond and the other one is this board,correct?
BUT what i am saying is that t-break reviewed the same board(NON-SLI) and the yellow coloured pcie X2 slot was not present there.
also this board has only one pcie X1 and the t-break one has 2 pcie x2

so, now we know, that nF4-Ultra = nF4-SLI

so, the same chipset - just on the mobos there aren't 1xPEG16 and 1xPEG8, but 1xPEG16 and other < PEG8

awesome work onepage

How does one think of sticking a PCI-E 8x card in an 2x slot?

Interesting find for sure! :toast:

zippy is best ps I have ever used. I am doing ps review coming up and I have both 460 and 700w units. Talk about tanks! They are very heavy, which to me speaks volumes about quality "guts" of units.

BTW, onepage, you amaze me again :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by p4z1f1st

so, now we know, that nF4-Ultra = nF4-SLI

so, the same chipset - just on the mobos there aren't 1xPEG16 and 1xPEG8, but 1xPEG16 and other < PEG8

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Nah, they are still different things! Real SLI is a bit better than fake SLI :D

Interesting... for those who don't go with a SLI board, they could still upgrade to SLI one day. Neat!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JNav89GT

zippy is best ps I have ever used. I am doing ps review coming up and I have both 460 and 700w units. Talk about tanks! They are very heavy, which to me speaks volumes about quality "guts" of units.

BTW, onepage, you amaze me again :)

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do they have internal pots???

cuz if they do im sooo getting one


the 300w one at newegg actually has 520w according to the rated amerages on the rails, and its only $80

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Onepagebook

Nah, they are still different things! Real SLI is a bit better than fake SLI :D

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There is no such thing as real or fake SLI. The difference isn't with the SLI support, its PCI-E. The SLI version has programmable PCI-E lanes that allows either 1 x 16x PCI-E or 2 x 8x PCI-E. The rest does not.

nVidia's implementation of SLI does not require any additional logic on the chipset, all they need is 2 PCI-E slots that could house both cards. That yellow slot is probably a 2x PCI-E slot (unlikely to be 4x). Unfortunately, putting the card on a 2x slot may incur a performance penalty though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jack

How does one think of sticking a PCI-E 8x card in an 2x slot?

Interesting find for sure! :toast:

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Why not? You could stick a 64bit PCI into a 32bit slot right?

I´m thinking that u won´t be able to do that with 6600GT´s tough...
PCI-e 4x doesn´t have to supply all the power that a graphics card without the power connector needs. The power connector on the 6800ultra is a workaround.

Can u test this? Or is really the only difference in the number of lanes?

great work!

But AFAIK Gpus wont even use up the full 16x pci-E bus yet anyways. so i bet the scores are only so close because of the drivers or mobo.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eversor

I´m thinking that u won´t be able to do that with 6600GT´s tough...
PCI-e 4x doesn´t have to supply all the power that a graphics card without the power connector needs. The power connector on the 6800ultra is a workaround.

Can u test this? Or is really the only difference in the number of lanes?

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why not? Here you go!

Albatron 6600GT x2:

http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/6600GTSLI/2.JPG

http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/6600GTSLI/7.jpg

http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/6600GTSLI/1.gif

3d03:

http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/6600GTSLI/3.gif

3d05:

http://coolaler.nil.com.tw/images/6600GTSLI/4.gif

**hint: MSI nf4 has a very useful OC tools for overclock the grahpic card in bios just like the overclock CPU does. By using the coolbit is very inconvenient for me to test the desire value before you can adjust the frequency. It's definitely stable and even better than coolbits.


http://www.devilsword.com/ms7125/test/biosnvoc.jpg

THATS JUST SICK man makes me want to go NF4 does this board overclock better then the Neo 2?

Fantastic work. Glad to see those 6600s working. That BIOS overclocking for the video cards looks awesome, too.

Ok, so the rest of the contacts shouldn´t be power ones :p

Great work onepagebook!

onepagebook = teh 1337 masta ninja :)

but where would u get the SLI bridge chip thing?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chris27

but where would u get the SLI bridge chip thing?

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Good question, I think that can be purchased from MSI. :toast:

yeah onepagebook is a pimp, and btw dissolved, what anime is that pic from?

That anime pic is from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Most likely the End of Evangelion series. The character is Misato

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IamIkari

That anime pic is from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Most likely the End of Evangelion series. The character is Misato

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How profer it is that someone's nick here is from Eva too can answer that one? :)
Anyways, OPB, got any hand on Asus SLI yet or are you funded by MSI not to touch Asus? (Uhmmmm I like that OPB... OPP, OPB, OC-R...)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IamIkari

That anime pic is from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Most likely the End of Evangelion series. The character is Misato

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no
It's our Taiwanese palm drama.---> http://www.pili.com.tw/

you can download a short clip about that figure that here at:
Here

Asus? lol..not even close to MSI :D

Nice job of experimentation. It's really not surprising though if any of you have read any articles on how PCI-E works. Even with 2 large PCI-E slots, only one video card would be running 16X, the other would likely be running 8X assuming there are no other PCI-E devices installed in the system. If there are, say for instance a soundcard using 2X or 1X, then it would reduce the 8X to say 7X or 6X. Basically tho you are just reducing it to 2X by using that slot, but it's not surprising that it works. Cool that someone has tested it tho.

this is kind of like what DFI is planning on doing by using the ultra chipset for their SLI board, except i think they have it doing 16x and 4x though.

Very interesting indeed nice work onepagebook

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadMikeSS

Nice job of experimentation. It's really not surprising though if any of you have read any articles on how PCI-E works. Even with 2 large PCI-E slots, only one video card would be running 16X, the other would likely be running 8X assuming there are no other PCI-E devices installed in the system. If there are, say for instance a soundcard using 2X or 1X, then it would reduce the 8X to say 7X or 6X. Basically tho you are just reducing it to 2X by using that slot, but it's not surprising that it works. Cool that someone has tested it tho.

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Would the reprecussions for dropping the mulitplier be much? We all know that 8x AGP vs 4x AGP won't drop performance much, so how is it for pci-e?

I just noticed something curious from your pic of the 6600gt's OPB. What is holding the waterblock down on the A64? I don't see any clips... using gravity? or even crazier, thermal epoxy?

Does this mean it is possible to do a 4x SLI with a board with 4 PCI-E slots (no matter what size)? Anyway this rocks :toast:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by _Eduard_

Does this mean it is possible to do a 4x SLI with a board with 4 PCI-E slots (no matter what size)? Anyway this rocks :toast:

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It would, but there's no way to connect them together. :stick:
But if nVidia wanted to do so then it would be possible ;)

Thats some amazing stuff.
I already can see that these new motherboards are going to be So Fun:D A lot of good stuff to mess with.

OPP

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OPPAINTER

Thats some amazing stuff.
I already can see that these new motherboards are going to So Fun:D A lot of good stuff to mess with.

OPP

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Don't blow too much $$ :D

yep. Imagine 4 high-end cards in SLI. That'd be 4x $500 :eek:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by _Eduard_

Does this mean it is possible to do a 4x SLI with a board with 4 PCI-E slots (no matter what size)? Anyway this rocks :toast:

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The drivers are written for 2 cards not 4.

Is the whole 2x thing less effective than a standard PCI-E Video Slot? Like the one the 2nd card is in?

Seems to be a lot of mis-conceptions about PCIe. The truth is that a PCIe channel is a totally independant thing. You can mix and match them however you want. 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, ... nx. It doesn't matter. The Nforce 4 comes with 20 PCIe channels. These can be arraged however you want, but generally speaking you would put 16 of them for graphics and the rest for other stuff. You can actually tape over the pins on the video card to disable PCIe channels as you like, and it will work perfectly.

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...lld19JRD05NTc=

ok, i calculated it out - the performance-difference is only 2% :) :) :)

that makes me happy ;)

I think we all know its a great board lacking one thing. Vcore :mad:

i thought OPB was going to try a vcore mod a couple days ago, but he hasn't said anything about it. if that mod works, then this board ought to be okay for everyone.

Very nice discovery!
Too bad most of the non-SLI boards have only PCIe1x slots apart from the one PCIe 16x. Would it work even with 1x?

Onepagebook: Another thing, your 6600GT scores look weird to me as if the cards where running slow. Can you tell us how high the clock on those 6600GT was in 3D mode? I'm just curious to see if maybe the NVidia driver or your Bios did something to the clocks you set.
I'm asking because my single 6600GT does 4174 3Dmarks2005 at 579 core and 1150 mem (Nforce4-4x chipset).

Killeroy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadMikeSS

It's really not surprising though if any of you have read any articles on how PCI-E works. Even with 2 large PCI-E slots, only one video card would be running 16X, the other would likely be running 8X assuming there are no other PCI-E devices installed in the system. If there are, say for instance a soundcard using 2X or 1X, then it would reduce the 8X to say 7X or 6X. Basically tho you are just reducing it to 2X by using that slot, but it's not surprising that it works. Cool that someone has tested it tho.

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There aren't any board that can even do 16x + 8x. The best are some super expensive Intel chipsets and the nForce SLI which can do 8x + 8x. 16x + 8x would require 24 lanes just for the video, and another few for other slots. So far no one has made a chipset that does more then 20 lanes.

Also, I don't think you can do 7x. I think the allowed widths are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32.

Nice find, OPB! :up: