Which video card(s) to use?

[Gravelhighway]

All of the parts for my new PC came today!

Motherboard: LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI Intel Motherboard
Video Card: GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3

However... I also have two new GeForce 8800 GTS video cards. I originally planned on using them in my new machine until I found the GT for such a good deal.

So my question is... with my motherboard, can I run the 8800 GT and one of the 8800 GTS cards?

And somewhat of an odd second question... what is the benefit of running dual video cards? The monitor can only be plugged into one card, so I've never bothered having two video cards before.

Thanks in advance for your help and advice!

[RickyTick]

Originally, to use SLI the video cards had to be identical; same gpu, same manufacturer, and same bios. From Geforce driver release 80 on, Nvidia relaxed a little bit and now the video cards can be from different manufacturers, but they must be based on the same gpu. So if you have a 8800GT and an 8800GTS 320 or 640, they won't work in SLI. But if you have an 8800GT and an 8800GTS 512, I think they should work.

The benefit of SLI is increased gaming performance. Dual cards use SFR (Split Fram Rendering) where each frame is divided in two and each half is sent to a different gpu to be processed. It just makes things faster that way.

btw, I'm not smart enough to know all that. I read it at hardwaresecrets.com. :D

[Gravelhighway]

I searched for that and didn't find anything! Google failed me, but RickyTick did not. Thank you. :D

[RickyTick]

You're welcome.

I ran across that article a couple of months ago and printed it out. I knew it would come in handy some day.

You didn't mention if your 2 8800GTS cards are 320, 640, or 512 mb. If they are the 320 or 640, then forget SLI and just run the single 8800GT 512 that you already have.