GA-G33M-DS2R Crossfire

[way]

I own the Ds2r,q6600 combo and for the most part love it.I still have yet to buy my GPU but plan to do so in January,most likely it will be the R680.There has been some xfire testing done with this board(G33) and the P35 chipset in online testing way back as far as May and early as October with what are now considered outdated graphics and chipset drivers.

http://my.ocworkbench.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=66226

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/10/12/crossfire_comparison_intel_x38_versus_p35/1

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2995

My questions are:

When in xfire mode are both pcie slots reduced to 4x?
Has anyone outside of techsite reviewers tested out xfire with this board with recent drivers?
If a single card was used in the 4x slot and benchmarked,how would it compare to the 16x slot?Is this even possible?
Those xfire cables look short to reach the 4x slot in the Ds2r,do they?I have only seen pictures with closer spaced pcie slots in xfire.
What is the slowest Ati card that maxes out the 4x slot(if any)?
(slightly off topic & speculative)Will the dual gpu r680 by itself be considered xfire or "something else"?

While I appreciate input in the form of educated guesses and links to online tests,I would especially like to hear of results directly from people who own this board and tested with their gpu's .Any 3870 or 3850 owners out there?

Thankyou for reading

 

[lt_shiro]

Yes the board supports cross fire, yes the bridge cables will reach.

 

[way]

Do you know if it is possible to put a single graphics card in just the 4x slot to test out the slot's ceiling?I dont have a pcie card to test this.