Question about a 2nd video card

[Amit Roy]

Hi all,

Last year I made my first attempt at building a computer. My motherboard is
an ASUS M2N32SLI - Premium Vista Edition. It has 2 x PCIe slots. Back
then I had no idea between nVIDIA and ATI chipsets and I put in an ATI x1650
Pro video card, which was on sale. Now I know I should have put in an SLI
card because it would have allowed me to put in a second card and double
bump the GPU performance. Which brings me to my question: If I put in
another ATI X1650 Pro card in my second PCIe slot will it do anything?
Since I have 2 PCIe slots can I use Crossfire with a second X1650 card? The
card is Crossfire compatible but my motherboard saying nothing about it.
Thanks!

[tpow]

Post by Amit Roy
Hi all,
Last year I made my first attempt at building a computer. My motherboard
is an ASUS M2N32SLI - Premium Vista Edition. It has 2 x PCIe slots.
Back then I had no idea between nVIDIA and ATI chipsets and I put in an
ATI x1650 Pro video card, which was on sale. Now I know I should have put
in an SLI card because it would have allowed me to put in a second card
and double bump the GPU performance. Which brings me to my question: If I
put in another ATI X1650 Pro card in my second PCIe slot will it do
anything? Since I have 2 PCIe slots can I use Crossfire with a second
X1650 card? The card is Crossfire compatible but my motherboard saying
nothing about it. Thanks!

either system have to be linked with a small hard or ribbon
bridge...........have you done this.

[Amit Roy]

The motherboard came with a ribbon for SLI cards, not ATI. The ATI X1650
Pro card does not have the finger connectors to plug the ribbon to.
However, they can be Crossfire enabled if the motherboard is Crossfire
certified.

Post by tpow

Post by Amit Roy
Hi all,
Last year I made my first attempt at building a computer. My motherboard
is an ASUS M2N32SLI - Premium Vista Edition. It has 2 x PCIe slots.
Back then I had no idea between nVIDIA and ATI chipsets and I put in an
ATI x1650 Pro video card, which was on sale. Now I know I should have
put in an SLI card because it would have allowed me to put in a second
card and double bump the GPU performance. Which brings me to my
question: If I put in another ATI X1650 Pro card in my second PCIe slot
will it do anything? Since I have 2 PCIe slots can I use Crossfire with a
second X1650 card? The card is Crossfire compatible but my motherboard
saying nothing about it. Thanks!

either system have to be linked with a small hard or ribbon
bridge...........have you done this.

[norman]

Post by Amit Roy
Hi all,
Last year I made my first attempt at building a computer. My
motherboard is an ASUS M2N32SLI - Premium Vista Edition. It has 2 x
PCIe slots. Back then I had no idea between nVIDIA and ATI chipsets and
I put in an ATI x1650 Pro video card, which was on sale. Now I know I
should have put in an SLI card because it would have allowed me to put
in a second card and double bump the GPU performance. Which brings me
to my question: If I put in another ATI X1650 Pro card in my second PCIe
slot will it do anything? Since I have 2 PCIe slots can I use Crossfire
with a second X1650 card? The card is Crossfire compatible but my
motherboard saying nothing about it. Thanks!

No it will not work, the motherboard is an NVIDIA motherboard if you
want SLI you will need to purchase 2 new GPUS NVIDIA(graphics cards) to
use with that motherboard you have a an ATI graphics card and its is
used for crossfire on a crossfire compatible motherboard, How ever you
can use 1 single GPU on either NB/SB combination ATI/NVIDIA/Intel/AMD,
If you try to enable the 2nd GPU chances are it wont boot or will cause
harm to to the motherboard or both GPUs my suggestion would be to buy a
new single NVIDIA GPU Such as the 8800 Series (prices are dropping with
the new NVIDIA GPUs being released) and when it no longer plays the
games at a good FPS then you can add another GPU as a rule of thumb
SLI/Crossfire will only gain 20-30% gain in performance and not all
games are optimized for Either SLI/Crossfire.