I have just about decided to bite the bullet and go for a major upgrade thanks to some encouragement from my wife.Asus P5N-E SLI Motherboard with the 650i chipIntel Core 2 Duo E-6600 CPUFour sticks of KVR800D2N5/1G Kingston Memory = 4GB8800GTX Primary Video Card7950GT Secondary Video CardThermaltake W0116RU 750 Watt Power SupplySuper Power SUNP-FUL-110FT-B Full Tower Computer CaseVista Home Premium is pending with some apprehension.All are included from Newegg with the exception of the case.My concern is that I am not too sure which video cards to pick.At the moment I have the PNY VCG880XXPB GeForce 8800GTX listed and the EVGA 512-P2-N635-AR GeForce 7950 as my secondary in the bag.I do see that there is some difference in the Memory Clock Effective data along with a few other items for the 8800GTX models. Is this significant? Any Spec. that should be preferred and/or avoided?Am I going for overkill on the secondary video card? If possible, I would like to be able to retain the PCI slots, but not at the expense of performance. For only displaying FSNAV (when and if it becomes available for FSX) do I need this good a card for the secondary, or would a less expensive, and probably smaller card be the wiser choice?Any ideas or advice would be appreciated.Thanks:RTH

Might be worthe searching this forum. I think there was some problems using a 7 series and 8 series card together. Not sure if it was solved.

How many monitors are you going to connect?More than two I assume or the 2nd videocard would make no sense.How about hard drives?

>Am I going for overkill on the secondary video card? If>possible, I would like to be able to retain the PCI slots, but>not at the expense of performance. For only displaying FSNAV>(when and if it becomes available for FSX) do I need this good>a card for the secondary, or would a less expensive, and>probably smaller card be the wiser choice?For your stated purpose of your secondary card, you can get by with the most basic of video cards, so yes you would be majorly wasting your money buying a 7950 for this.Gary

Thanks for the replies folks:I believe my idea is proving to be suspect at best.See my other posts and the replies in the hardware (and FSX) forums.From what I am reading, if I am interpreting correctly what others are saying, there is a high probability if not absolute certainty that mismatched cards of different models may not work at all in PCI Express x16 dual sloted motherboards. At a minimum, it deserves careful research and consideration. Sounds like mismatched drivers or something of that nature.I had originally speculated on three to four monitors as was previously possible with a dual head AGP and older model PCI cards. Unless the PCI Express x16 cards are matched, I fear the same goal might not be possible. As someone said. It ain't AGP and PCI.It would however be possible to combine the PCI Express x16 card with an older style PCI slotted card if a slot was available.Thanks again:RTH

Hello:Presently useing three monitors which are mandatory to me personally. It looks like matched video cards are required for the best of the newer cards to work in the newest motherboards, so that would give me a capability of four (NOT in SLI configuration).I presently have four 80GB HD's, two SATA + 2 PATA (were in an Array0 configuration, presently only backups. Will put them back in the Array0 configuration upon upgrading). I have another 250GB unit(Presently primary, will be put back as a backup when reconfigured). I have a sixth old SCSI 30GB HD that also is just for misc. or backup implmentation. My present motherboard has a capability of four SATA connectors(two in a raid configuration, two which are not). It also has a PATA/IDE ribbon connector and two IDE ribbon connectors, which allows six IDE users. As all new motherboards under consideration only have one PATA/IDE plus one IDE ribbon connector, I will have to negate one of the CD units. I probably will leave the smaller SCSI HD out of the new system as well if I need the applicable PCI port for anything (probably covered up by the video card anyway).Thanks for the reply:RTH

Don't see any reason why they shouldn't play nice together - and the P5N will revert to x8 on the PCI-E slots when two cards are fitted, it's not a dual x16 board.

This thread is interesting to me since I'm currently choosing a system for running FS9 on WinXP:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=23847&page=For displays my ideal setup would be 5 displays using a matrox graphics extension module (I want to explore all of this on a single PC before looking at networking solutions):3D cockpit spanned across 3;1 for the overhead 2D panel;1 for the pedestal 2D panel and anything else.Anyway I'll probably start with 4 diaplays. I was going to get something like 2 Nvidia 7950GT's and have:1st card - Forward 3D spanned view and 2D pedestal panel;2nd card - left and right 3D spanned views.However another option is to get 1 7950GT and span the 3D cockpit over it's two diaplays and use my current 6600GT for the 2D views only??? However if I mix series 6 and 7 cards the driver will default both cards features to the lowest... so the 7 series card should run faster but some of its series 7 features may not be available.I don't think you will be able to run Nvidia series 7 with 8 cards together since series 7 uses the 93.71 drivers but series 8 use the 97.92 version - you can't use two different Nvidia drivers at the same time.

I use 97.92 with a modded inf for my 7900GS with no problems. Its good for a 3dmark06 score of approximately 5200 combined with an x2 [email protected] i.e. its performance appears not to be handicapped.By the way there is a new 8800GTS which sells for around $300. It could be a better buy than a 7950GT I guess.Regards,

>I use 97.92 with a modded inf for my 7900GS with no problems.Is there a performance advantage over the 93.71 drivers? (What do you mean by "modded inf"???)>By the way there is a new 8800GTS which sells for around $300.>It could be a better buy than a 7950GT I guess.Yeah that's interesting... another option, ####! For me a minor issue with series 8 cards is their need for two PCI slots. If I had two of them in a motherboard I'd probably be left with only one free PCI slot :( .

I haven't benchmarked them to the extent to state that they are faster only to verify that they provide similar performance to 93.71. I just tried the said set because i was trying to solve some obscure media playing issues.Inf files in the drivers describe among other things which cards the particular drivers support. A 97.x driver needs this file changed to include older models such as 6 and 7 series cards. You can find such modified drivers at various places, among them www.guru3d.com.Regards,Vassilis