Using a GTX260 and GT430 in HybridSLI

[cbstryker]

So I've posted about my issues with my GTX260 before and even tried contacting Nvidia's customer support and they just gave me a really lame response:

Hello Chris,

Thank you for contacting NVIDIA Customer Care.

This is Abhishek, assisting you in troubleshooting the issue that you are experiencing. First, I would like to apologize for your support request being unexpectedly delayed.

I understand that you are unable to get good performance in Linux for the NVIDIA Graphics Card.

We're sorry, but we are not able to address Linux installation, usage and troubleshooting questions via this forum as this is for windows based platform. If you have any questions or problems, please check the Linux discussion forum.

Which makes no sense because the "forum" I was addressing was their direct technical support. This is just another reason for me to switch to AMD when I can afford it.

But before I do that I had an idea that may help me. The main problem with my system is that the GTX260 seems to have serious performance issues. My old 8800GTS had much, much better performance in everything.

I'm currently running 3 monitors with a GTX260 and an 8400GS (as a video passthrough for the third monitor) and using Xinerama. With Xinerama off I still get fairly bad performance, but it is a bit noticeably better with it off.

Anyways, my idea is to buy a 430GT so that I can use a single monitor to output to all three monitors (and use TwinView instead of Xinerama) but then link the 430GT and the GTX260 in HybridSLI.

Would this work as I hope it will?

[Ulukai]

As far as I know, Hybrid SLI only works when combining a dedicated Nvidia graphics card with an on-board Nvidia chip on the motherboard. Also, I know it works for Windows, but I'm not sure about Linux. Make sure you check that first.

"Hybrid SLI® technology, based on NVIDIA’s industry-leading SLI technology, delivers multi-GPU (graphics processing unit) benefits when an NVIDIA® motherboard GPU is combined with an NVIDIA discrete GPU. Hybrid SLI increases graphics performance with GeForce® Boost and provides intelligent power management with HybridPower™. "

http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybrid_sli.html

[cbstryker]

Originally Posted by Ulukai

As far as I know, Hybrid SLI only works when combining a dedicated Nvidia graphics card with an on-board Nvidia chip on the motherboard. Also, I know it works for Windows, but I'm not sure about Linux. Make sure you check that first.

"Hybrid SLI® technology, based on NVIDIA’s industry-leading SLI technology, delivers multi-GPU (graphics processing unit) benefits when an NVIDIA® motherboard GPU is combined with an NVIDIA discrete GPU. Hybrid SLI increases graphics performance with GeForce® Boost and provides intelligent power management with HybridPower™. "

http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybrid_sli.html

Hmmm.... ok, interesting. Then would just standard SLI work? If I'm not mistaken it's possible with the latest drivers to mix and match cards, but what issues would I run in to, if any? Would I theoretically get GTX260 + GT430 power? Or even at least what the GTX260 can do on it's own?

[Ulukai]

I really hate to disappoint you, but you can't mix different GPUs in SLI. You can however mix the same GPUs from different manufacturers with different clock speeds and different memory sizes.

Ref: http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone2_rel80.html and http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_faq.html#c16