Which board supports crossfire.

L

ltcharles

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 23, 2010
Messages
246
OK Well I never have done crossfire and well with eyefinity and big resolutions crossfire seems to be a good bet to enjoy my games with max settings.

So here is what I want to do currently I have a mini itx with 1156 cpu and only 1 pcix16 slot and i want to get my feet wet with crossfire by my bday which would be in may 14th. Wit that said I will not be upgrading to a 1155 sandy bridge if anything I would wait 2 years to get the replacement for the 1366 socket. With that in mind here are some things to consider:
1. I want to keep my system as small as possible ie micro atx
2. Would like a board that supports 2 x pci x16 slots @16x both
3. Like dark color motherboard ie all black, or black and red, or black and yellow, none of that baby blue or multiple color m/b like lan party boards
4. Has the ability to oc the cpu
5.has no pci slots i cant stand seeing a slot that I will never use.
6. Board must support crossfire its ok if it supports both sli and xfire
7. Board must do raid 0
8. Please note I can give up some features as long as my cards run at full 1 x16 speed
9. currently I have 1333mhz ddr3 so i wuld like an m/b that can still use my ram

OK so my questions are:
1. What board do you recommend and is sill being sold?
2. What cases are available that are workbeched for micro att only?. I already saw th antec skeloton and thats to big. I like the lian li work bench made for micro atx.
3. I have an i5 750 1156, if i go crossfire will i bottle neck the cards? 2 5870 eyefinity 6
4. regarding ?3 if i my cpu is under powered what i7 should i get?


Well it think thats about it for now. thanks for your help.
 
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Try this Newegg link, there are only a few 1156 MIcro ATX boards with 2 PCI Express slots for Crossifre:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ption=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

3 open box and 3 new boards. Presuming you want a new board, you choices are very limited.

The Asus may be the only one that can do RAID as well, so that narrows you choices down to:

*drumroll please*
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131599

It has 1 PCI slot that the second GPU will cover. Don't worry about upgrading your CPU. If you want a CPU upgrade, just move to a new socket at this point.
 
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There is absolutely no need to do x16 on each slot for crossfire, you will not see any bottlenecks besides in very few artificial benchmarks using the most powerful single-GPU cards (i.e. GTX 580 and HD6970) available. Any P55 board that does do x16 on two slots uses the NF200 chip to increase the PCI-E x16 lanes available, and these are used to make boards that support quad-Crossfire/tri-SLI, and as such are all ATX boards.

Most boards will continue to have PCI into the forseeable future (besides top-end enthusiast boards, where all slots are PCI-E, even then, the only board I can think of that does this is the EVGA SR-2). This is to maintain maximum compatibility with older peripherals that most people tend to carry over (you're not the only one that uses these boards). It's like saying motherboard makers should put only 4 USB ports because that's all I ever use, I don't care if other people use more than 4.

Don't bother upgrading the CPU. The only option you have is the i7 860, which at it's price point you might as well just get the i7 2600k or i5 2500k.

Pretty much all P55 boards can overclock, and H55 as well. Almost all these boards use the ICH10R southbridge, which can do RAID. All P55 boards are crossfire capable, and H55 as well. Just not all are SLI certified.
 
oh for some reason my brwser pulled up the wrong newegg ling giving me 1366 auss rampage weird..

yeah Ilike i said I wont get sandy bridge dont want to spend more money on something I dont have to. In this case I have all the stuff just need a motherboard that does crossfire. I am on with 1 16 x and 1 8x or any mix. As if you read my post I clearly say "8. Please note I can give up some features as long as my cards run at full 1 x16 speed"

I aplogize if it wasnt to clear I meant to say that I can give up many features so long as 1 pci x is running at 16x and the others dont or 8x time 2 would be fine i think as well for xfire.

With that said my current 1366 evga board does not have a single pci slot just a mix of pci x 1-8

As far as the 1156 goes you could be right only the 1366 top end will only carry all pci x 16. But again I dont want all x16 so I am ok. very true about saying the 4usb logic but again thats why I asked if theres any boards that cater to MY NEEDS not others. If I have to give up a feature so be it but it will bemy call not yours or others.
 
one more thing yeah i think my browser is fing around cuz I cant use neweggs drop down boxes so that would explain my "thats great but it has to be socket 1156 not 1366 lol."

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr hate ie 9.0

as far as slots being covered it doesnt matter since they will be water cooled.

Yeah the asus seems like the best fit for my needs. THANKS A BUNCH!

So now time to search for a micro atc workbench
 
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You have to realize that P55 is a mainstream motherboard, whereas x58 is a server class board that is somewhat stripped for catering to the top enthusiast market. As such, being mainstream, it has to cater to mainstream consumers, who are much more likely to use older technology. Even most x58 boards have at least 1 PCI slot, even though x58 users are much more likely to use newer technology, like PCI-E network cards, sound cards, etc. P67 is the same way.

I personally do like Asus's ROG boards. The ROG connect is a very nice feature to have, you can have readouts of your computer on your laptop while gaming on your computer. Not to mention their design is nothing short of awesome. I use a Crosshair IV myself, Asus's AMD ROG board.
 
thanks cool but staying away from AMD ex wife ruined it for me. She loved AMD and well i made it my life long promise I will never own an AMD cpu/motherboard.

Hell every time I look at my gpu, now that it technically is AMD I get bothered but love ATI stuff so i have get over it. But it does bother me some lol migh go green here in future once Nvidia gets its act together. Meaning they stop doing card with weird vram amounts.
 
I'm not saying you should buy AMD, I'm just saying I like Asus ROG boards. The one that I have happens to be an AMD board, that's all. Asus makes ROG boards for all lines (AMD, P55, P67, X58, etc). The Maximus III Gene is a ROG board.
 
Ah I see got it yeah I am not to smart with the lingo of the motherboards or cpu's. Would help if I actually goggled up the name before I posted.
 
Yeah, I should've been a bit clearer. ROG is an acronym for Republic of Gamers, which Asus markets as their top-of-the-line gaming hardware. They have ROG graphics cards, ROG motherboards, and ROG laptops. Not sure if anything else encompasses their ROG lineup though. I think they also have a ROG mouse?
 
All AMD boards with multiple PCI-E slots support crossfire over an the bus interface.
 
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