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38XX crossfire as upgrade path

M

MetalDwarf

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2002
Messages
1,072
I'm looking to upgrade to a Q6600 soon
i was planning getting a 8800GT and the Abit IP35 (regular)
i need 3 PCI slots (sound, tv tuner, RAID)
i wasen't planning on going SLI so i was fine with only 1 PCI-E(16x) slot

but now that the 3850/3870 are out i am wondering if going with a 3870 might be a better choice since is almost as fast as an 8800GT. I could get a single 3870 for now and in a year or so once it starts to show its age get another and do crossfire. i would loose one of my pci slots but i can deal with that then. I know there is the school of though that instead of spending more money on the second card as an upgrade you should just sell the card you have and buy best new card.

i still haven't seen any "good" reviews looking at crossfire performance. how much of an improvement does crossfire provide?
 
I can't speak for everybody, but for me at least, I planned to do that with my 7800 GT on an nForce4 SLI 939 board. By the time I was itching for an upgrade, the 8800's were nearly out and it wouldn't have been a good use of money to pour more into old tech. (And neither was a socket 939 processor upgrade, as the Core 2 Duos were already far superior.)
 
Considering the HD3870 already supports DirectX 10.1, I think that by the time you want to upgrade, getting another HD3870 would be cheaper and yet it is still not an old tech.
 
Not sure if you can use 2x 3870's with your need of 3 PCI slots. The 3870 is a dual slot design. It might eat up too many slots and you will lose 1 or 2 of your PCI area's due to it.

I am not sure if the different manufacterers have different cooling options. But one may have a single slot cooler.
 
inZane said:
Not sure if you can use 2x 3870's with your need of 3 PCI slots. The 3870 is a dual slot design. It might eat up too many slots and you will lose 1 or 2 of your PCI area's due to it.

I am not sure if the different manufacterers have different cooling options. But one may have a single slot cooler.
Click to expand...


see my original post

i would loose one of my pci slots but i can deal with that then.
Click to expand...

i know i would loose a pci slot. i would probably see if i could replace my raid controller with something PCI-E at that time. or maybe there will be decent HDTV-tuners by then and i could get one of them in PCIE or maybe there will be 1slot 3870's by that time so i wont loose anything
 
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