Sli upgrade

[Rosscogeo]

Hello first post,

im buying a new pc with an sli motherboard (ASUS® P8P67 PRO) and 1x nvidia GTS450.

if i want to upgrade this in future do i just buy another compatible card and put it in a second pcie slot or do i have to bridge them and what does that mean?
oh and how would i do that?

 

[Phoenix]

Yes you would need to put another GTS450 in a free slot then use an Nvidia SLI bridge to connect the two together, it looks like this:


You will need a 600w power supply for this and you'll need an ATX sized case as well (anything but the Stylish Piano Black Enigma Micro-ATX and InWIN Dragon Slayer will be fine).

 

[Rosscogeo]

i suppose this is a stupid thing to ask but here goes
when i first speced this pc it told me to only use a 450w power source does having two cards really need 600w?
also how many games/programs actually need or use bridging?

 

[JSG10]

Yes you more than likely will need a more powerful PSU.
If you plan to have 2 cards in SLI yes you will need to use a bridge otherwise they won't work together as one.

 

[Phoenix]

You could run them with a 550w power supply but it wouldn't be a good idea to run them on a 450w power supply.

 

[Nemesis]

only games or programs that have been optimized / designed to take advantage of sli will show performance boosts
http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone2_game.html

 

[Rosscogeo]

ok this is all good thank you
last question is it better to have 2x 1gb cards in sli bridging or 1x 2gb card?
would there be any difference if so what?

 

[Phoenix]

Two 1GB cards would outperform a single 2GB card(which is the same card like the GTX460) because aside from the extra VRAM the 2GB card is basically the same.