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So confused!

J

jerryrigged

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 10, 2006
Messages
220
It's been six years since I was seriously scouring Hardocp as a hardware junkie. Now my six year old comp has been fried by lightnig... Yay =/ I'm up to the idea of buying two ATI HD 4850s but I'm absolutely clueless as to what motherboards you all are using! I was looking at Tom's Hardware articles as well as the articles on here about the video cards but all the boards mentioned seem to be SLI and not Crossfire! Any recomendations, from what you are using in price range of the 100s? Thanks.

Maybe this belongs in the Mobo forum but I'm not going to double post... And you all own the cards so you're the experts.
 
X38/X48 are the best for crossfire.

P45 is the newest, and coolest running of intels chipsets, but supposedly it has an issue where it bottle necks crossfire because the lanes run @ 8x when using Crossfire.
 
I have not seen any x38/x48 boards that have more than 2 PCIE Slots...
 
I would say that if you were using a 6 year old computer and still would be had lightning not fried it that perhaps you should not be even thinking about running 4850's in crossfire or purchasing an x48 to run them with if you consider ~$200 to be too much for a board. No disrespect intended, but perhaps you'd be better off with a nice dell?
 
if you havent upgraded for 6 years looks like your not THAT much of a performance freak ( like me! lol! ) maybe you should consider a 4870 as well. if ur keen on 4850s go for a P45, the X8 Pcie lanes wont make a big diff in games. 4850's dont stress PCIE lanes that much to see a difference. you mite see a perf hit with 4870s but 4850s you should be ok.
 
As it seems $100~ boards aren't around atm I'm thinking: Foxconn X38A... Anyone using this w/ two HD 4800s atm?

EDIT:

Actually, here is where the confusion stems from:

"AMD Radeon HD 4800 Series

System Test Setup

We will be using a quad-core CPU based platform with the new EVGA 790i Ultra SLI motherboard and an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (Overclocked to 3.66GHz), and 4GB of Corsair CM3X1024-1800CD Dominator DDR3 to make sure the system will not be bottlenecking the GPUs. "

Yeah... So The EVGA 790i also accepts ATI cards? Because if it does then doesn't: EVGA 750i FTW? Because I'd buy that in a heart beat.
 
You can run a single ati card in an nvidia motherboard but you cant run two in crossfire mode. Crossfire only works in intel chipsets. If you want a good motherboard i reccomend http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128336 you have been out of the game a long time motherboard are not as cheap as they used to be. But the only I linked for you has pci-e 2.0 can support 8gbs of DDR2 and can run crossfire setups. Its a nice board and you will be future proof for a while. Meaning you will be able to use all of the core 2 chips and crossfire cards that come out within the next couple of years.
 
TheBlueChanell said:
P45 is the newest, and coolest running of intels chipsets, but supposedly it has an issue where it bottle necks crossfire because the lanes run @ 8x when using Crossfire.
Click to expand...
It doesn't bottleneck because it's PCI-E 2.0, giving 16x effective.
 
Triple Crossfire? Hothothot! Uhh neq question since it's 16x16x4 can the third be a lower-end card?

More than that, though wouldn't it be bottle necked by the Q6600 and the 4gigs of ram?
 
jerryrigged said:
Triple Crossfire? Hothothot! Uhh neq question since it's 16x16x4 can the third be a lower-end card?

More than that, though wouldn't it be bottle necked by the Q6600 and the 4gigs of ram?
Click to expand...

Are you referring to the motherboard I posted? The one I posted only takes AMD AM2 cpus.
 
Is there a reason why you're going with Crossfire 4850's instead of a single 4870 or GTX280? The latter two options will likely give you more consistent performance across different applications and even the GTX280 option would likely be cheaper if you take into account that you could get a significantly cheaper motherboard if you don't need two PCIe X16 slots.
 
"The one I posted only takes AMD AM2 cpus." Ah I see, what AMD chips live up to the Q6600?

Also, I'm realizing that my 22 inch Westinghouse only supports up to a res of 1680x1050 so I'd put off buying the second video card until after I got a 24 inch, say in two months... That means that I could go with a heaftier power supply, say $150-200.

"if you don't need two PCIe X16 slots."

I like the idea of just getting one card atm because of the aformentioned reason but two x16 slots means it will be cheaper when I put an upgrade into the comp.
 
Something like this might be close to the performance of a Q6600: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103250

I would get something like this one though: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105211

The opteron will run cooler (its a 75 watt chip versus 125 watt), and supports hardware virtualization.

Both are quad cores, but to be honest though you would probably take better advantage of a cheaper faster dual core, something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103234

That 5600 is 2.9 ghrz and 65 watts. It would handle single threaded applications the best of the 3. Being cheaper, it will be easier to replace when the faster quads come out. The AM3 cpus will workin AM2 motherboards when they come out so you are covered for a while.
 
You don't want to go with an AMD CPU at this point in time. They're slower clock for clock, and don't overclock as well/high. AMD/ATI graphics, fine, but stick with Intel on the CPU.
 
Thing about the 4870 is the apparent noise problem? And thanks ZMT I'll look more into this ;)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-phenom-9600-black-edition,1767-35.html

=/

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQzMywxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

great, more confusion... I'm trying to convince myself the phone rules because of this deal:

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=855424

Editing again:

Since the first video card would be tied to the cpu with such a drastic price reduction, and since the price of the DFI LANPARTY DK 790FX you could get two additional video cards, so you'd have three, and it would equal the cost of a Q6600 based bundle.

In other words, would the performance of the three video cards + the phenom not outweigh the performance of two video cards + the Q6600?
 
LOL The choice is clear:

AMD Solution:

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W
A-DATA Vitesta (2 x 2GB)
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4850 x2
AMD Phenom 9950 BLACK EDITION
MSI K9A2 Platinum
(-Case & HD)

= $972.95

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W Power Supply
A-DATA Vitesta (2 x 2GB)
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4850 x2
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS4
(-Case & HD)

= $ 1022.94

Hmmmmmm...... I can spare the extra $50.00 ;) ty for the help everyone!
 
jerryrigged said:
Triple Crossfire? Hothothot! Uhh neq question since it's 16x16x4 can the third be a lower-end card?

More than that, though wouldn't it be bottle necked by the Q6600 and the 4gigs of ram?
Click to expand...

not a big deal on the x4
 
Good job on the intel build Jerry Thats what I would choose. I like AMD but they just cant compete in performance/price right now. In day to day web browsing you would be fine but the core 2 shines in pretty much every category.
 
q6600 i lurve. It still is the best bang for the buck quad out there (imo anyway)
+ 4870 and youre good to go
 
Dazed66 said:
PCI Express 1.0a versus 2.0, Crossfire with 2x16 versus 2x8 @ Tom's


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-meets-pci-express,1761.html


Read the first page title careful, UP to 20% faster, that increase was only seen in one game.

I thought it was a good read though, helped when I was trying to decide on a P35 or and X38 mobo a few months ago.
Click to expand...
They compared 8x/8x PCI-E 1.0 versus 16x/16x PCI-E 2.0. In other words, they compared 8x/8x with 32x/32x effective. It's a totally different comparison. A proper comparison for what I was talking about is to compare PCI-E 2.0 8x/8x with PCI-E 2.0 16x/16x (ie. P45 vs X38, not 975X vs X38).
 
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