Unlock the Power of Multiple Cards - SLI and Crossfire

If you're fairly new to shopping for graphics cards, or computers in general, there's a few things you should consider before buying a new card. With today's technology using a single graphics card is no longer the only option. In fact, you can even have more than 2 cards, depending on your motherboard.

A computer's motherboard has a certain number of slots for hardware components. Many older computers could only accommodate a single graphics card, while support for two cards is pretty much the standard now a days. There are plenty of motherboards that support 4 graphics cards as well now, in case 2 just isn't enough for you. You should pay attention to how many slots a graphics card uses however, as some require more than others. Nvidia's GTX 295, for example, is actually a dual GPU card and takes up as much space as two normal graphics cards would.

If you've read this article's title, you may be wondering what "SLI" and "Crossfire" are. Unfortunately, you cannot simply install any two graphics cards and have them automatically work in unison. GPU developers had to first create an application that allowed multiple cards to be bridged. The first multi-GPU interface was developed by Nvidia and is known as "SLI". In 2005, ATI released their own multi-GPU solution known as Crossfire. In order to use 2 or more graphics cards, you must have a motherboard and cards that are Crossfire or SLI compliant. All units must match as well, you can use a single Nvidia graphics card in a Crossfire ready motherboard, but you cannot use SLI on the same motherboard, for example.

If you're on a tight budget, don't immediately throw out the idea of buying more than one graphics card. In some cases, two cheap cards in SLI or Crossfire may outperform a single GPU that costs more than the two cheaper cards combined. The possibility for multiple GPU's also provides some future-proofing if you decide to go with a cheaper card. A year or two down the road when you're card just isn't powerful enough anymore you can add a second and enjoy increased performance for a low price. Of course, you could also buy multiple expensive, high performance cards and play any of today's games at blistering speeds.

Using multiple graphics cards unlocks a whole new level of performance, and can be a great alternative for the budget-minded as well. The next time you're shopping for a new graphics card, don't forget about the possibility of using more than one.

Nick_Sattelberg

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