SLI Graphics Card Question

[DIY PC PROJECTS]

I am buying a server. It's an HP ML350 G5. I'm getting a great deal. Now what I want to know is, it has 3 PCI-e 4x slots one right next to each other, I was wondering if I can take 2 NVIDIA GPU's and put them in SLI. Will the performance take a huge hit? Will it not even let me put them in SLI? Help me out please.

[Howlingwolf101]

What are you going to use it for?

[Orangeator]

SLI drivers pretty much suck. I would steer clear of SLI/Crossfire personally. 

[don_svetlio]

Nvidia driver doesn't allow SLI via PCIe 3.0 4x slots - 8x is minimum

[Aereldor]

Just now, don_svetlio said:

Nvidia driver doesn't allow SLI via PCIe 3.0 4x slots - 8x is minimum

The way they are with licensing SLI technology to hardware (motherboard) manufacturers, they don't even need to, since every SLI motherboard is going to have two physical x16 slots, each rated to run at x8 bandwidth- NVidia won't have it any other way.

The question is whether the drivers block our SLI if you use a CPU that doesn't have enough PCIe lanes to feed two 3.0 x8 slots, but has the slots themselves. I've always wondered how that would work.

[don_svetlio]

Just now, Aereldor said:

The way they are with licensing SLI technology to hardware (motherboard) manufacturers, they don't even need to, since every SLI motherboard is going to have two physical x16 slots, each rated to run at x8 bandwidth- NVidia won't have it any other way.

The question is whether the drivers block our SLI if you use a CPU that doesn't have enough PCIe lanes to feed two 3.0 x8 slots, but has the slots themselves. I've always wondered how that would work.

Interesting question

[othertomperson]

5 minutes ago, Orangeator said:

SLI drivers pretty much suck. I would steer clear of SLI/Crossfire personally. 

 

2010 called, they want their factoids back.

 

As for the motherboard in that server, you will not be able to run SLI. However, you will be able to use them as independent computational devices. That makes more sense in a server/workstation anyway.

[Aereldor]

5 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

Interesting question

Well, I can't think of a CPU that has less than 16 lanes. Even the Pentium G3258 and Celeron G3900 have 16. Not a great question I suppose.

Either way, given that even the lowest-end Intel CPUs support 16 lanes and considering NVidia's much tighter regulations about SLI technology, you'll never run into issues as everything is streamlined to slide in and post, even if you'll have a horrendous CPU bottleneck with the aforementioned processors. I suppose this locked-down yet streamlined model is one of the virtues of NVidia as manufactures and licencors.The problem is that Team Green like their greenbacks, and SLI motherboards are stupidly overpriced.

[DIY PC PROJECTS]

The specs now are: 

 

2 - Intel Xeon X5460

32 GB DDR2 ECC Server Memory

5 - 146 GB Hard Drive in Raid 5

No Graphics Cards

 

I'm Just Going to be playing games like Minecraft and Portal 2. Maybe some other games and some light video editing. 

 

Will I experience any performance issues running these cards in these slots?