GTX 260 and 8600GTS together..

techguy

Hi,

I currently have and Abit IP35 Pro and Corsair 650W with a 8600GTS card. Will I be able to add a GTX 260 to this as my gaming card and then use the 8600GTS for more monitors. I'm assuming there'll be no problems from win XP seeing as they'll use the same drivers..

The Motherboard has 1 xPCI-E X16 and 1 x PCI-E X16 (x4 bandwidth)

What exactly is the x4 bandwidth? How do I diffrenciate? Would i be putting the GTX 260 in there and the 8600 in the standard slot?

Thanks..

EDIT: According to this setup the cards should work together..

I see that he/she has the 8600 dedicated for physics..this seems uber cool! Does anybody know how I could go about setting this up? In the mean time i'll continue googleing!:pac:

Spear

techguy wrote: »

Hi,

I currently have and Abit IP35 Pro and Corsair 650W with a 8600GTS card. Will I be able to add a GTX 260 to this as my gaming card and then use the 8600GTS for more monitors. I'm assuming there'll be no problems from win XP seeing as they'll use the same drivers..

The Motherboard has 1 xPCI-E X16 and 1 x PCI-E X16 (x4 bandwidth)

What exactly is the x4 bandwidth? How do I diffrenciate? Would i be putting the GTX 260 in there and the 8600 in the standard slot?

Thanks..

EDIT: According to this setup the cards should work together..

I see that he/she has the 8600 dedicated for physics..this seems uber cool! Does anybody know how I could go about setting this up? In the mean time i'll continue googleing!:pac:

It's a PCI-E x16 length slot, but with only 4 lanes worth of bandwidth available. You could also use the 8600 to run PhysX in games and take the weight off the GTX280.

techguy

Spear wrote: »

It's a PCI-E x16 length slot, but with only 4 lanes worth of bandwidth available. You could also use the 8600 to run PhysX in games and take the weight off the GTX280.

BTW it's GTX260, does the fact that it's only x4 bandwidth matter? How would I go about setting it up to run PhysX ?

Are you aware of any guides?

Solitaire

techguy wrote:

What exactly is the x4 bandwidth? How do I diffrenciate? Would i be putting the GTX 260 in there and the 8600 in the standard slot?

The x4 has only a quarter of the bandwidth of the x16, and the GTX260 will be your new primary card (i.e. for gaming and/or primary monitor) so it goes in the x16 regardless of what you intend to use the 8600GTS for. Putting it on the x4 link would greatly reduce its performance (every time it has to load something into its onboard memory from somewhere else on the PC the x4 link will bottleneck the speed at which it can get the needed data and strangle the card) even if it did work. In this build it would most likely prevent it from working on the primary monitor at all if you tried to put it in the lower slot (as its not a symmetrical layout its not true SLI)

Spear

techguy wrote: »

BTW it's GTX260, does the fact that it's only x4 bandwidth matter? How would I go about setting it up to run PhysX ?

Are you aware of any guides?

The current nVidia drivers include PhysX support and libraries so just install them. In the nVidia control panel there's an option to use the second card for PhysX only and leave the graphics to the GTX260.

techguy

Thats perfect, just checked out the control panel there and I know what I have to do now..Just need a molex to 6 pin PCIex power connector and i'm set..!

I plan on using the 8600GTS for adding another monitor and PhysX so the X4 bandwidth should be ok (hopefully!!)

Thanks guys..

techguy

I just found out I probably have to have an SLI motherboard to achieve this.. is that true?

**Regrets not opting for SLI board during build :-(