Quick Crossfire and HD7000 question!

[chinkecheese]

I'm planning on buying one of these motherboards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138320

or

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0371775

or

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0374835

or

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0366193

My question is, can the biostar run a current-gen crossfire solution? i,e two 6950s?
it mentions that it has a pci express 2.0 x16 (x2 slow, one of which runs electrically at 4x). I'm not entirely sure what the 4x means.

Also, since neither card has pci 3.0, will it run the new HD7000? I read that it's pci 3.0 compliant, but is it a requirement?

thanks so much..


p.s. which would you recommend?
Biostar or Asus? ($49 or $69)
Gigabyte or MSI ($89 or $79)

 

[xBanzai89]

Neither of those boards are good for Crossfire due to the x4 slot. Pretty sure you will start to get lower performance, because the x4 slot means it has the quarter of the bandwidth that a x16 does. Is there any other options?

PCI-e 3.0 is going to work on 2.0 at least anyway.

 

[chinkecheese]

thanks for the input, i edited my OP.
that REALLY sucks about the x4 slot... I'm not sure why they would even include that if it gives much lower performance.

 

[chinkecheese]

Going with the biostar. Read several reviews on 16x/4x crossfire. Apparently it was only really noticable on pci-e 1.0, as for pci-e 2.0, you may see a 5% decrease which is enough to live with.

But because I really plan NOT on crossfiring ( i just want it as an option.) I think I'll go with this board.

It's $40 cheaper, comes with a remote, and a smart phone app ( check it out! It's super cool.) it'll work well with my setup. (1920x1080 monitor, and an HD 1080p projector.)

I'm going to buy now, but I have 10 days to return, so if anyone else has any other input they would like to add, please don't hesitate.

thakns!!

 

[sirmonkey1985]

thanks for the input, i edited my OP.
that REALLY sucks about the x4 slot... I'm not sure why they would even include that if it gives much lower performance.

why they would include it? because there are still plenty of cards that can run in crossfire and on 16x/4x without seeing a performance drop. also the other reason is that graphic cards aren't the only thing that use pci-e x16 size slots.

 

[xBanzai89]

why they would include it? because there are still plenty of cards that can run in crossfire and on 16x/4x without seeing a performance drop. also the other reason is that graphic cards aren't the only thing that use pci-e x16 size slots.

Basically this. I don't know how much it will effect it, but there will likely be a hit. Even more so with the coming generation and there after. If you had other options and wanted XFire I don't see any reason in having a board limit you like that.