Anna, your motherboard is designed to function without difficulty when only 
one video card is installed.  The manual will explain that there is a card 
on the motherboard which should be plugged in one way when only one video 
card is being used and plugged in another way for SLI operation with two 
matching video cards installed.

David, the ability to pair onboard graphics with a dedicated video card is 
only now being introduced with nvidia's latest line of chipsets, such as the 
780a.  Anandtech has a preview of this chipset, here, 
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3305 .

While the integrated graphics can be matched with a relatively low-end video 
card in a SLI configuration, it looks like the real benefit of this new 
chipset will be in it's capability of switching back and forth between the 
integrated graphics and a dedicated video card (or cards) depending on the 
application being run.  With highend gaming cards consuming quite a bit of 
power, this new configuration will allow the gaming card to be put into a 
sleep state, while the low power integrated graphics chip takes care of a 2D 
desktop.  The dedicated card (or cards) are brought back online when an 
application such as a 3D video game is started.

At least that is the idea, I'm not sure if the implementation has fully 
worked out all the kinks, yet.

John Sproule

-------- Original Messages Below --------

Date:    Mon, 19 May 2008 23:22:13 -0700
From:    David Gillett <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Video Card

On 19 May 2008 at 20:25, g.Computer9f wrote:

> Yes.  I misunderstood.  The PNY is running Nvidia GeForce6.  I'm now
> trying to figure out whether the fact that I only have ONE video card
> installed will matter to the GeForce6 SLi driver....
> AnnaSummers
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: Gary Tennesen
>
> The PNY more than likely is running Nvidia chipset -- are you sure that
> device manager is not reported your PNY's chipset (Nvidia 6600)?


  My first thought was along the lines of "She spent extra money and effort
to duplicate, in a slot, the vidoe built in on the motherboard?"  But
although it's the same chipset, it's not an exact duplication.

  For one thing, although the AGP video card has it's own RAM on board, the
motherboard video proabaly uses a chunk of system RAM.  Odds are that this
can be rewritten by software a bit faster, but access by the video refresh
circuitry may slow down software performance...

  That, in turn suggests that the different performance characteristics of
the two sets of video circuitry may be different enough that SLi cannot link
them together.

David Gillett

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