I screwed up, I bought Crossfire motherboard thinking to use SLI?

Question

I bought P5K-E of Asus because it was just the perfect motherboard (from my point of view and because of the Intel P35 chipset). I was looking forward to buy Nvidia 8600 GTS from XFX, but later I discovered this strange (for me) dual GPU techonoly (where you attach two graphic cards together) then I discovered that SLI was for nVidia and Crossfire for ATI.

Then I thought, I could upgrade later to SLI if I get interested enough. Then the big screw up, I bought the mobo, I haven't bought yet the graphic card (thankfuly), yet, but if I want to dual it, then I couldn't do it with two nVidia cards on this CrossFire mobo, I mean, after heareing so much NOs on ppl asking the same question (using one over the other).

I know this doesn't look like a question, seems like I just looking for some confort words, but here are the real questions:

Are ATI really bad graphic card?
Can I use one Nvidia card on this crossfire mobo?

Answer 1

First off, SLI and Crossfire are enthusiast platforms, meaning if you can afford to buy two $500 cards, so considering you are looking at the 8600GTS, I would not be worries about SLI or Crossfire. ATIs are very good graphics cards. You can use a single nVidia card on the Crossfire motherboard, but you cannot run two in SLI.

Answer 2

No ATI are not bad cards, in fact spec for spec-they pretty much perform as well as each other (Nvidia+ATI) I personally prefer Nvidia because of a better GUI, but I have had ATI cards before with no problems either.


http://pctechboard.com/index.php

Answer 3

sli is better .. motherboards cost less than graphics cards .. the latest ati cards at the top end are good no doubt though .. those are the facts ..

Answer 4

There is nothing wrong with ATI, Half Life 2 was designed for it they are just competing brands.