GeForce GTX 295 Quad SLI gaming test

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How to setup GeForce GTX 295 Quad SLI

How to setup GeForce GTX 295 Quad SLI

I wanted this article to be some sort of small do-it-yourself guide, because IF you even go for this technology in the first place, you are better off building the PC yourself. That will save you a lot of money and the overall building experience is just so much more rewarding. The installation for NVIDIA first.

Props to NVIDIA here as hard and software installation simply is a breeze. Obviously assemble your PC, I won't go into details here as hey ... you are a guru. If not, and do not understand the basic priciples here, you should forget about Quad SLI completely.

My recommendation for the GTX 295: Install just one GTX 295 in the system first. Insert that card into the upper x16 PCIe slot. Now it's a question of connecting the power supply connectors, you must use both the 6 & 8-pin connectors. Small hint here, you can not plug in a 6-pin connector to the 8-pin connector. Board partners will supply a 6 to 8-pin converter. Just make sure you have plenty of amperage on the PSU 12 volts rails and that you have four 6-pin PCIe connectors or two 6-pin plus two 8-pin connectors in total available.

Once you have everything connected properly it's time to boot into Windows Vista (Vista (32/64) is mandatory for Quad GPU support). Now just make sure you have uninstalled your current ForceWare drivers. If you didn't do so .. try and hit F8 during bootup, go into safe mode and uninstall the drivers.

In windows we simply install the newest ForceWare drivers available. We currently test with the 181.20 Vista drivers. If the first card installed successfully, power down the PC again.

Now install the second card in the second PCIe slot and connect the second set of 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors. Last but not least, do not forget to slap on that SLI bridge on both graphics cards, it's delivered with your SLI or X58 mainboard (mind you that the one X58 not supporting SLI is Intel's own X58 board).

Once you have your system ready you can have Quad-SLI powered up and ready to roll within a minute. It really is that easy to achieve.

After you boot into windows, Vista will very likely recognize the two new GPUs and install them. If needed, run the driver installation once more. Reboot, and once Windows has restarted the NVIDIA sentinel software will report and ask you if you like to enable SLI mode. You probably want to flag that with a YES. And sure .. you'd suck if you select no.

That's all. You are good to go. All current games supported in the drivers have the proper application profiles for Quad SLI rendering (AFR and such). Is a game not supported, it will be fairly easy to create a profile yourself within the GeForce software drivers.

BFG GeForce GTX 295 reviewYou must use the 8-pin power connectors, in case your PSU does not have them. A 6 to 8-pin power converter is included in all retail boxes.

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