GTX 460 SLI - Do the cards have to be Identical?

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luxe

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Hi,

Here is the gfx card i have: Asus ENGTX460 768mb.


I am struggling to find one exactly like it for a decent price, and i want another one to SLI with.

I see a lot of variations are out in the 768 stable, and the one i have is difficult to find.

Could i use the asus ENGTX 460 TOP or DIRECTCU as a companion card (they are both 40nm and 768mb) or would sli not work unless they are identical?

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
No, they don't have to be the same make or model, though they both have to be 768mb variants. Keep in mind though, that if you use a card that is factory OCed with a non-OCed one, then it will under clock the OCed one to match the other card's speed.
 
The one i bought is manually oc'd by me in afterburner.

So on your advice the best thing to check is clock speeds, and find a card that is as close as possible to stock on the one i have? That's some good advice.
 
It would be ideal, but like you said, the costs are normally a bit high. I would get anyone you can in your budget as you can always OC them both later on, not that I think it would be necessary. ;)
 
I am more worried about compatibility and hassles than a few hundred either way. I'll do some hunting and repost in this thread now that i know what to look for.

Thanks SharkBait.
 
2nd hand is fine, i see there is one on Gumtree in Randburg for R1500, thats pretttttttttttty decent.
 
As long as the GPU is the same, you should be able to run it in SLI.
eg. GTX 460 768MB + GTX 460 1GB OC should work, but GTX 460 + GTX 470 / GTX 460 + GTX 460SE won't.
 
Last edited:
Pada said:
As long as the GPU is the same, you should be able to run it in SLI.
eg. GTX 460 768MB + GTX 460 1GB OC should work, but GTX 460 + GTX 470 / GTX 460 + GTX 460SE won't.
Click to expand...

They are all 40nm chips, should i be looking at other factors instead?
 
luxe said:
They are all 40nm chips, should i be looking at other factors instead?
Click to expand...
They might be using the same DIE size, but they're not all the same GPU.
The GTX 460 768MB and GTX 460 1GB use the same GPU, but just different memory. The GTX 460 has a different GPU than the GTX 460SE (or at least I think so, seeing that it has a GTX 460 GPU with 1 Streaming Multiprocessors missing - read here for more about it) and GTX 470.

If the GPU (the graphics processor) differs, then you can't run the cards in SLI, but you can use one for the graphics processing and the other for PhysX.

You can read more on SLI compatibility here: http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_faq.html#c16

Edit:
I might actually be wrong about the GTX 460 & 460 SE being incompatible, since they both have GF104 cores.

Edit #2:
The GTX 460 & GTX 460 SE has the same GPU (GF104) and they should work in SLI, but you will get much better performance when you run 2 identical cards instead.
 
Last edited:
Pada said:
As long as the GPU is the same, you should be able to run it in SLI.
eg. GTX 460 768MB + GTX 460 1GB OC should work, but GTX 460 + GTX 470 / GTX 460 + GTX 460SE won't.
Click to expand...

Can I mix and match graphics cards with different sizes of memory?
No. For example, an XXXGT 512MB cannot be paired with a XXXGT 1GB in an SLI configuration.
Click to expand...

Anyway, while the GPU architecture is the same, the cards a have different number of ROPs, in addition to different memory bus widths.

You wanna SLI you're going to need 2 x 768MB or 2 x 1GB
 
Thanks Rudimental. I can't believe I actually missed that memory part of the article that I gave the link to :)
 
Pada said:
Thanks Rudimental. I can't believe I actually missed that memory part of the article that I gave the link to :)
Click to expand...

lol It happens. I just sent an email, and as I read through it just after it went I saw a glaring typo, arg.

Nvidia are really keen on ensuring that SLI is only between exactly the same types of cards, whether that is for sales or technical reasons, I am not sure. If it looks like different things are similar enough to SLI, then chances are that there is some real or manufactured reason that will prevent them from doing so.
 
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