SLi two different models...

[TheCarLessDriven]

Can you SLi two different models of cards? For example an nVidia GTX580 and a GTX 560ti? I thought they made this possible just recently around last year?


Thanks

[Hondacity]

Crossli?

[PiLsY]

Only with a board (or gpu) with a Lucid Hydra chip - and performance is pants. MSI and Sapphire both make boards with Lucid chips on (and anything z68 based I think).

I'd avoid tbh...

[Olly_K]

use the 560 as physx ?

[TheCarLessDriven]

Only with a board (or gpu) with a Lucid Hydra chip - and performance is pants. MSI and Sapphire both make boards with Lucid chips on (and anything z68 based I think).

I'd avoid tbh...

Ok thanks. yeah dont want to be constrained to just those cards.

But would I be able to use my GTS 250 as PhysX with a GTX 580?

[Boulard83]

Yes !

[TheCarLessDriven]

Thanks! I was just about to say never mind cause I found out too.

[markwrc]

although a GTS250 will slow a GTX580 so you can only really PhysX with the same kinda horsepower as your primary GPU, so like a high 2xx series or mid-high 4xx or 5xx

[PiLsY]

Was just about to say itll be faster with just the GTX580. You'd need (at a guess) at least a GTX460 to keep up with the GTX580 for physx.

[Boulard83]

I had a GTS450 with a SLI GTX460 and the GTS450 never worked harder than ~45% under physx games and this was a rare case, the load was 25-30% most of the time on the GTS450.

[markwrc]

when i was a tad crazy and used a GTX480 for PPU, it had a load of 56% in Mafia 2 bench

[PiLsY]

Its not about load, im purely guessing but Id say its down to raw speed. GTX580 w/physx enabled benches faster than GTX580 w/GTX260 sp216 for physx despite loading the 580 @ 99-100% and GTX 260 @ 47%. Using GTX460 1gb for physx showed a nice increase in min fps and a small increase in max fps.

May even be down to drivers, no idea really. I was on 266.58 when I tried it. My brief tests seemed to show you need to stick to the same architecture level of gpu to get improved results.