Nvidia SLI doesn’t support dual screen

[doc_ock]

A BOSNIAN GAMER friend owner of a SLI setup asked me a very interesting question that I tried to investigate and resolve with Nvidia. He suggested that he couldn’t have SLI enabled and have dual screen mode operating at the same time.

It’s very simple - as soon as you turn SLI you will lose dual screen mode and your second screen will shut off instantly.

We asked Nvidia but it never got back to us officially so we tried it ourselves with two 6600GTs and I learned that you cannot use SLI and two displays at the same time, at least not with the current drivers.

Some gamers actually like to have chat application or some other stuff on second display but with SLI you just cannot get you second display in use while you are playing the game. Some like to chat when they got shot in the game while waiting for the new game to start.

As soon as you turn the SLI mode off, you second display will instantly start. We hope that next driver can resolve this but we are not sure we hope that Nvidia will respond this time.
Ouch. Is there anything else I need to know before deciding whether or not to take on a dual SLI set-up? :lol:

[jollyeskimo]

Ouch indeed. If the same thing happens with ATI's own SLi solution then I'm going to be mighty peeved.

[luthair]

Consider that SLI works by one graphics card offloading work to a second. I can think of two methods, the first and more likely, both cards must finish before displaying or work is displayed as its finished. With the former if the second card is also rendering a desktop you might lower performance by waiting on the second card. If the latter, parts of your screen will lag as one card is also attempting to render a desktop.

Essentially you'd either lower performance or have visual distortions.

[doc_ock]

If the same thing happens with ATI's own SLi solution then I'm going to be mighty peeved.
Which would be totally understandable. Perhaps graphics card manufacturers should be required to print warning labels on their boxes in the same manner that the pharmaceutical companies must disclose side effects on their packaging/commercials. :lol:

[jollyeskimo]

When SLi was first announced the first thing that popped into my mind was a cheap, easy, and well-performing dual-to-quad monitor setup for the everyman. If it can't even do two monitors without throwing a hissy fit, then SLi is dead to me :mad:

[luthair]

I believe its meant to be able to handle 2-4 monitors, just not while using SLI mode. I hear windows doesn't handle more than 2 monitors gracefully though.

[jollyeskimo]

Shame, really....asking me to choose between SLi or multimonitor mode is like asking me to choose ATI.... or Matrox.

[GateGuardian]

What is SLi? :?: :?: :?:

[Aravinth]

What is SLi? :?: :?: :?:


NVIDIA® SLI™ (Scalable Link Interface) is a high-performance technology that allows users to intelligently combine and scale graphics performance by having multiple NVIDIA GPUs in a single system. SLI works by intelligently scaling geometry and fill rate performance for two GPUs.

Learn more about SLI (http://www.slizone.com/content/slizone/learn.html)


Aravinth