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Hello folks. I recently bought an Asus board from a freind. I would like to run it with dual gfx cards. Between the gfx slots there are two short white slots. Is this where you are suppose to install the bridge to run two cards together. If so where would I get one. I did not get one with the board. I got everything with the board exept the driver disk and what ever part it is that I need to run it in SLI mode. I am not to worried about drivers I can get them from Asus or nvidia. Thanks
Those two slots are actually PCI-e x1 slots. The bridge is connected to the top of the two gfx cards, thus creating a bridge. You might contact Asus but I found nothing on their site to which they even sell these devices or..much of anything else there. I did find this one during a search online, and it seems it's specific to Asus motherboards.
http://www.xpcgear.com/asusslibridgef.html
The bridge connecting piece is normally supplied with the graphics card - I've never had one supplied with a motherboard yet.
Are SLI bridges product-specific, or are they universal? Abit's parts store sells SLI bridges, but I have no idea if it's what you can use. FWIW, here's the link.
http://www.uabit.com/WebStore/index....h7ufsf57eh6r54
From what info I can gather and i could be wrong. I have to use the one that is supplied with the board. This appears to be an Asus thing. I will look in the GFX box that I have to make sure that one is there, Although I looked it over and did not find one the 1st time. Thanks
I looked in both the gfx box and the mainboard box and there is no conector for sli. The manual for the card said that the connector should be supplied by the mainboard manufacture. So I guess I will have to go to the Asus website to see if I can find one. If any one might have one or know the whereabouts of one,the board is a Asus A8N-sli deluxe Nforce 4. Feel free to contact me. thanks.
I believe I gave a link for one for Asus motherboards. Did you miss that?
Sorry, I completly missed that Photolady. I have one on order now. Thank you.
I figured you missed it. And you're welcome!
One other question. I bought two sata hd's and two sata optical drives. Is there any particular order in which I plug them in? Should I plug the operating drive in and one optical drive in to get it going and then install the other drives after its running or can I just plug them all in and go. I won't be setting up a raid configuration. Sorry old age I can't remember how i did it on my last build. My current desk top has two sata drives but I can recall if I did them one at a time or separatly and this is my 1st build using sata optical drives. I will be running VISTA and dual gfx cards. The manual does a good job explaining raid but does not give any order of what drive goes to what port. thanks
I was just looking the board over. I noticed that there are 8 sata ports. Four are red and labled raid and four are black and numbered 1 thru 4, so I assume my operating drive which will be c will attach to 1 and my back up drive will plug into 2 and the optical drives 3&4. Am I correct or dosn't it make a difference? I am thinking of installing a floppy drive also, is that really nessasary these days? again thanks
If you are installing XP, yes you will need the floppy to F6 the SATA drivers.
It doesn't really matter what SATA port you use for which drive. I always put the boot drive on port 1, but only for my own convenience of knowing what is where - it would work just as well on any other port.
Going to be using Vista. Thanks folks.
Install Vista
Install SP1
Install mobo drivers with a reboot between each driver.
Install video drivers.
Anti virus and Firewall.
Now get the updates.
OK I have the computer up and running, no OS installed yet. The 1st try I got into the bios and set the date/time and other stuff I wanted. I pressed F10 to save and rebooted. It would not reboot all all I got was three beeps, so I shut off the main power switch and turned it back on it posted and I had to go back into the bios and redo everything. this happened 3 times one time I got 4 beeps. Then I jiggled the top gfx card hit the reset and it booted to the no os disk installed. I reset it and powered down four or five times and now its goes to the no os disk installed, no problem that is what its suppose to do. My question is why do you think I had to redo the bios settings in the begining but now it seems fine. I am going to get a new mainboard battery just in case. Would a bad connection from one of the gfx cards cause it to loose the bios settings? It does not seem possible to me. The case has plastic retainers to hold the cards in but I am going to screw them to the tower. As they seem a little wobbley to me. Again thanks!!!!!
Asus is the answer as most of their mobos, if something goes wrong, default back to the factory settings. Even a bad shutdown can cause it to happen.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!
I got the system up and running. As of right now I have XP Pro installed. Had some problems getting Vista to run. I will try that later. I have a question about SLI. I went to nvidia's website and down loaded the mainboard drivers and gfx drivers for the board. Is my computer suppose to show two gfx cards or just the one that the monitor is plugged into. How do I tell if the sli is functioning. Everything else seems fine. This is my 1st sli build so I am kinda in the dark here. The board board is an Asus nforce 4 sli deluxe. (yes I know obsolete) but it sure does run good. thanks
If you have two graphics cards, in SLi configuration, the computer/system will show both cards. That's normal, nothing to worry about.
My system only shows one card. Maybe I missed something in the bios. Or didn't get the right drivers. I am not use to Asus boards yet as I have been a Epox fan for so long. both cards have power to them and the fans are running. I have the sli bridge installed between the cards. thanks
The cards are BFG 8600 GT OC 512meg. With nvidias software you are suppose to be able to enable both cards. I have dual GFX card option enabled in the bios. But I am not finding the option on the software end. I though I had the right drivers installed but maybe not. Does any one know what driver from nvidia I need I been to their website dozens of times, I even installed the drivers from the disk that came with the cards. Still no option for dual cards on the software end. Nvidia's instructions say this option should be there and used to enable dual cards. thanks
Look in Device manager and see what is what.
Far as I know it is the one install that is all that is needed.
I found the problem. There is a little card between the gfx cards that looks like a memory stick for a laptop. It can be inserted in two different directions. When I got the board it was in the single gfx card position. I turned it around to enable dual cards, but apparently did not push it in far enough. All is good now and I am in gaming heaven. What a difference between this system and my other single core, single gfx card system (fast unit BTW). It just keeps getting better. Now looking down the road to next build.
Thanks for posting the solution. And that you found the problem. Daunting as these builds are sometimes, it's nice when the fix is simple.