Two cards NOT sli on 650i MSI

[dude_500]

My friend has an MSI P6N SLI-FI with two slots for sli. He has an 8800GTS 320MB and an older 6200 card he wants to use in the bottom slot for a 3rd and 4th monitor. I told him it's impossible because the second slot is a slave SLI slot rather than a second pci/e bus. Is this true or is there some way to do this?

[G.Foyle]

It's not true. Second slot is a regular PCI-E 16x slot, it can be used for anything: second video card (any, even ATI), raid controller etc.

[dude_500]

OK When he put it in the computer didn't detect anything even after the 6200 driver was installed. Do you have to turn it on in the BIOS or something? (SLI is advertised as x16 single or 2x8 on this board so would this limit the speed of the two buses to x8?)

[AliG]

you can't sli two different cards, you can xfire cards of the same family, but you can't xfire an 8800gts 320mb and 6200 card, but you can run them independently to power 3 to 4 monitors. Just don't expect any performance increases

[dude_500]

He doesn't want performance... he wants quad monitors. He has no bridge obviously, I don't think the 6200 even has a plug for sli. Regardless, it doesn't detect the second card anywhere and the driver doesn't see the second card. How do I set the port to be used independently?

[systemviper]

I'm pretty sure it can be done because you have to physically reverse a mini-PCB between the pciE slots to turn that slot into a SLI set. So it should just act like a pciE slot if that card setting is not reversed.

"Three PCI slots are included, of which two are still usable when SLI is enabled with dual-slot graphics cards. A single PCI-Express x1 port has also been placed above the upper most PCI-Express x16 slot so that it's always usable. The PCI-Express x16 slots have a big enough gap between them to allow for enough airflow, without having the bottom slot so close to the base of your case that your graphics card acts as a vacuum cleaner.

MSI still uses a classic mini-PCB flip method to select between SLI and non-SLI modes. This is certainly the cheaper option, but it requires you remove one or both of your graphics cards and have some nails in order to get the mini-PCB in and out.
"

The mini-PCB is #4

[dude_500]

I'll tell him to look in the manual for a bios setting to turn on the second slot maybe? I know it has that bridge set card, but it doesn't detect it even if it's set to no-sli

[dude_500]

I just looked in the manual and it says ""The PCI_E4 slot can only operate with PCI Express x 8 speed and only supports to install graphics card in SLI mode"

I guess it won't work thanks for the help though