Scalable Link Interface (SLI) is a brand name for a multi-GPU solution developed by NVIDIA for linking two or more video cards together to produce a single output. SLI is an application of parallel processing for computer graphics, meant to increase the processing power available for graphics.SLI allows two or three graphics processing units (GPUs) to share the workload when rendering a frame. Ideally, two cards using identical GPUs are installed in a motherboard that contains two PCI-Express slots, set up in a master-slave configuration. Both cards are given the same part of the 3D scene to render, but effectively half of the work load is sent to the master card through a connector called the SLI Bridge. As an example, the master card works on the top half of the scene while the slave card works on the bottom half. When the slave card is done, it sends its output to the master card, which combines the two images to form one and then outputs the final render to the monitor.
AMD CrossFireX (previously known as CrossFire) is a brand name for the multi-GPU solution by Advanced Micro Devices, originally developed by ATI Technologies. The technology allows up to four GPUs to be used in a single computer to improve graphics performance. CrossFire can be implemented with varying-GPU cards of the same generation (this is in contrast to Nvidia's SLI, which generally only works if all cards have the same GPU). This allows buyers who have varying budgets over time to purchase different cards and still get the benefits of increased performance. With the latest generation cards, they will only crossfire with other cards in their sub series. For example, GPU in the same series can be crossfired with each other. So a 5800 series GPU (e.g. a 5830) can run together with another 5800 series GPU (e.g. 5870). However GPU's not in the same hundred series cannot be crossfired successfully. (e.g. a 5770 cannot run with a 5870).A nameless razor fusses.
Now lets' go back to the main topic.
Here's the step how can you enable SLI on crossfire motherboard.
1. First you must have of course a crossfire motherboard( like p45,890gx,890fx,etc)
2. Two identical sli support video card like Geforce 9800GT, GTX 260 and etc.
3. An SLI bridge but updated "magic" SLI driver doesn't need an SLI bridge.
4. And the most important is this driver to support your crossfire motherboard to SLI.
Check out this link: SLI support driver.
Here's some screen shot taken. Regards to TPC.
Here's an example of SLI enable on P45 motherboard Crossfire support only.
GPU screenshot.
Test games on Crysis Warhead to see the difference between single and SLI enabled video cards.
SLI disabled
SLI enabled
Conclusion:
As we see, SLI benifits a lot on games. Thanks to this magic SLI enable driver coz we don't need to purchased an SLI motherboard.
