Legit Reviews

Now that the AMD Quad FX platform has been successfully benchmarked and overclocked, we can now have some fun with the system. With four x16 PCI Express slots present on the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS motherboard LR figured why not populate all of them? Read on to see how our attempt at running four card SLI went on the AMD Quad FX test system!

Limited by the size of the cards and power headers I installed two XFX GeForce 7900GTX graphics cards and a pair of GeForce 7900GS graphics cards to occupy all the x16 PCI Express slots with the same series of video cards. I then fired up the AMD Quad FX test system and was shocked to see that when Windows XP loaded that an alert message poped up saying that the system was SLI Ready.

Article Title: AMD Quad FX and NVIDIA's Four Card Quad-SLI - Will it Work?
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/428/1/

I wonder what would have happened if you had 4 identical cards? Maybe this is why it didn't stay enabled?

cadaveca wrote:I wonder what would have happened if you had 4 identical cards? Maybe this is why it didn't stay enabled?

could be, but i don't have four identical cards

Apoptosis wrote:

cadaveca wrote:I wonder what would have happened if you had 4 identical cards? Maybe this is why it didn't stay enabled?

could be, but i don't have four identical cards

Mod the vendor ID in the bios???

kenc51 wrote:

Apoptosis wrote:

cadaveca wrote:I wonder what would have happened if you had 4 identical cards? Maybe this is why it didn't stay enabled?

could be, but i don't have four identical cards

Mod the vendor ID in the bios???

might work... all the cards are from XFX though

Apoptosis wrote:

kenc51 wrote:

Apoptosis wrote: could be, but i don't have four identical cards

Mod the vendor ID in the bios???

might work... all the cards are from XFX though

I wouldn't try it anyway if I were you, it ain't worth the risk of having nothing to bench against ATI's new card(s)

Remember how the 8 series has dual SLI connectors? Even though it said "Quad SLI available" perhaps in order to use Quad SLI you really need cards that can be double connected (i.e. Card A]--[Card B]--[Card C]--[Card D)...

AMD an NV have had quad-card systems for shows in the past couple of weeks...or ever since 4x4 NDA lifted...makes me think that I may be right about the differing cards being the problem.

Hoping for a suitable crossfire board for 4x4...mmm4x R600......mmmmmm

I tend to suspect that, even though Asus built that board with 4 PCI-e slots, they didn't intend for the board to support 4 top of the line graphics cards. Now I am not familiar with recent Nvidia boards. But my Asus A8R32-MVP does allow me to configure my X16 slots for use with various types of PCI-e cards. So I know how it could work. Not that Nvidia would do it that way...

What I might also worry about is; if even a 1KW P/S was up to the task of holding up under the load of Quad FX and 4 top of the line video cards. But, in this case, all I know is that I wouldn't want to pay the electric bill.

oh it will work... the technology and hardware is there... the drivers are not.

I actually own one of these motherboards, and i'd like to correct you. You have the cards installed incorrectly.

this is NOT A 4 16X MOTHERBOARD! Right there on the box, and in the manual, it tells you in various places that this is a 4x4 board, that is 4 pci-e slots, however ONLY TWO RUN AT 16X!!!

The pci-e slot layout is as follows: 16x8x16x8. The two blue slots run at 16x, the two black slots run at 8x. This is not changable.
The only SLI option for this motherboard is two cards in the two blue pci-e 16x slots. SLI is not possible using the two black PCI-E 8x slots.