Dual video card questions

[lurchman]

I'm putting together a new PC. I'm using the MB Intel D975XBX, and the Intel CPU Core 2 X8600 Extreme.

I want to run two GeForce 7600GS cards in unison. I've never done the dual card thing before, so I'm a little green on the how to's. Both cards are PCIe ready. And the MB has three x16 PCIe slots. My question is, what makes the cards run together. Is there a physical jumper? Is there software to do this? I do like to do a lot of research before making any permanent decisions.

Thanks.

For all you critics out there. I have built several PC's. I usually keep them for a couple years, and then give them to my kids. Each time I like to try something different. Also, 2 GF7600's = $300, 1 GF7950 = $600. This PC is already expensive, so I need to save a few bucks somewhere. Besides, I can always change things later.

[MadPistol]

There should be a crossover link between the cards that comes with the motherboard. If I'm not mistaking, that should be all it takes to enable multi-gpu mode (provided the motherboard supports SLI) :t

[delRhode]

Well, like MadPisol says, motherboard has to support nVidia SLI... either there will be a BIOS setting to enable SLI, or a daughtercard on the motherboard to flip around to enable it. Also, once the cards are installed, there's a little cross-connect card that goes on top of the two cards, which also comes with the motherboard, usually.

With the hardware in place, nVidia's standard driver package *should* work... it will detect that there are two cards, and give you the option of running them in SLI, instead of as two separate displays. I say *should* because I've had problems with the latest 90-series drivers, and had to step back to the 80-series drivers. Beyond that... there are options in the drivers to set up specific behaviors for specific programs, but I've found that the defaults generally work quite well, so long as the drivers themselves behave.

[Midknyte]

you cannot run SLI on the 975 boards. you need an nvidia chipset. you could do crossfire, though.

Best of Video Cards & Monitors (http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=162277)
look at the links about SLI and crossfire.