VOGONS


Reply 20 of 27, by Srandista

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The Serpent Rider wrote:

Old SLI and Crossfire are at least interesting to tinker with. They are not limited to AFR only modes like GeForce 8800+ / Radeon 2900+.

You ma be right, but CF older then HD 2x00 are PITA to use (with exception of X1950 Pro). Dongles and Master/slave cards... Yeah, not really good start from ATI into multiGPU world...

dr_st wrote:

Well, obviously I haven't been keeping track of the developments. 😀 That does, sorta, prove the point - there is little practical (ugh, I'm getting tired of this word) value in supporting SLI/CF in mid-range GPUs, since a single, twice-as-powerful GPU, gives you the same performance, without having to deal with micro-stutter, special optimizations, profiles and other stuff like this, which serves to complicate the already complicated video drivers.

Well, but 386_junkie got a point. If you want to play old DOS game in practical way, then run them in DOSBox... Also, people are not buying convertibles, because they are practical. If you want practical car, you should buy family estate. No, they are buying them, because it's fun. And for the same reason you build SLI/CF system, it's fun. Yeah, there are some obstacles, but you can say the same about any other retro system.

Socket 775 - ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA, Pentium E6500K, 4GB RAM, Radeon 9800XT, ESS Solo-1, Win 98/XP
Socket A - Chaintech CT-7AIA, AMD Athlon XP 2400+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9600XT, ESS ES1869F, Win 98

Reply 21 of 27, by Unknown_K

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I would use single slot cards to give them some air to breath and nothing too new for that platform so SLI some 7900GTX, 8800GS, 9600GT, etc depending what you can find.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 23 of 27, by chinny22

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meljor wrote:

2x dual cards for quad sli.

This was what I thought for a WinXP build for cool factor not practical reasons.
Don't make same mistake as me though

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail … t-in-windows-xp

Reply 24 of 27, by candle_86

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the 7950GX2 quad setup never made any sense, DX9 can only do 3 max rendered frames, meaning the 4th GPU will always be idle, that was the big problem with it for the best SLI option AFR. you need a DX10 GPU and a DX10 OS to make quad make any sense.

Reply 25 of 27, by Skyscraper

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Here is another vote for 2x Geforce 7900 GTX. (If you can find any for cheap that is)

If you aim to run XP with SLI and Socket 939 I think it's fitting to use the last (non monstrosity) Nvidia DX9 card as it was released shortly after the FX60 and Opteron 185 (and also pre Vista). There are faster options and I'm normally not the one to insist that builds should be "period correct" but in this case I actually think it should as the build otherwise would morph into something almost modern... Another good thing with the 7900 GTX is that two in SLI will not use more power than a single 8800 GTX...

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 26 of 27, by The Serpent Rider

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Here is another vote for 2x Geforce 7900 GTX

7800GTX 512mb SLI are 20% cooler. Also 1000% rarer, so bonus points for that too.

If you can find any for cheap that is

Quadro FX 5500 cards are probably even cheaper right now and the best available option from G7x family.

Last edited by The Serpent Rider on 2018-04-25, 09:43. Edited 1 time in total.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 27 of 27, by candle_86

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Or look at old Dells, my 7900GTX's came out of a pair dell XPS's with Core 2 Duo's in them 🤣. The OEM cards tend to be cheaper when they show up, its also how I got my pair of 7800GTX Cards I keep in a drawer, also Dell system pulls, 256mb, but they have the 7900GTX cooler so they run much colder than a normal 7800GTX