SLI - is this correct?

[lonewolff]

If a system has more than one PCI-E x16 port does this mean that it will automatically support SLI and Crossfire? Or is there other hardware requirements when it comes to SLI and Crossfire?

Excuse my ignorance

[Praetorian]

With Crossfire, I'm pretty sure you can assume so, since I think ATI has kept it an open standard for all vendors, but nVidia has been a bit more picky and it looks like only their "nForce" boards or the mboards of specific manufacturers who nVidia has made deals with will work for SLI.

Keep in mind that I'm not an expert on this and I could be totally wrong here... I do know for sure that my Gigabyte motherboard supports Crossfire, but not SLI...

[Kyle_Katarn]

If you have 2 PCI-E x16's, and the sufficient power from your power supply (most places recommend about 1000W for high-end cards), then you can SLI away.

[calsmurf2904]

If you have 2 PCI-E x16's, and the sufficient power from your power supply (most places recommend about 1000W for high-end cards), then you can SLI away.

Nope:

In order to use SLI, a motherboard with an nForce4, nForce 500, nForce 600 or nForce 700 SLI chipset must be used. Although with the use of hacks and older drivers, one can make SLI work on motherboards with Intel, ATI and ULi chipsets, Nvidia has stated that only their own chipsets can allow SLI to function optimally, and that they will not allow SLI to work on any other vendor's chipsets. Some early SLI systems used Intel's E7525 Xeon chipset, which caused problems when Nvidia started locking out other vendor's chipsets as it limited them to an outdated driver set. In 2007, Intel has licensed Nvidia's SLI technology for its SkullTrail platform, and select motherboards supporting the Intel X58 (Tylersburg) chipset have unlocked SLI capabilities. Not all X58 motherboards support this technology, as Nvidia offered it to motherboard manufacturers at the cost of $5 per motherboard sold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Link_Interface