Best INTEL Crossfire Motherboard?

[thraxed]

I have to say I'm a little confused on this subject. I see motherboards that say 1st slot 16x and then the second slot says 16x, 8x, 4x, or 1x. Some say crossfire at 8x/8x electrical what ever that means.. I read that the asus pq3 i think it was, could be patched to run sli or crossfire, dont know if thats true, but it would be ideal for future upgrades. As where the Asus PQ5 could not be patched. I do not want to buy a board and 2 $300+ cards just to have the 2nd card running at quarter of its full potential. So if someone could explain this slot differential, and what electrical has to do with it, would appreciate it. Also what is the best motherboard for the topic?

 

[JC316]

Nearly all crossfire boards have one PCI-E X16 slot to run on. The other PCI-E is an 8X and when you use crossfire, it uses 8x and 8x. Certain boards do this differently.

P35 - 16x/4X
P45 - 8x/8x
X38 - 16x/16x
X48 - 16x/16x

No crossfire board will support SLI and vice versa.

Edit:

Also, the best will be an X38 or X48 board. P45 is good to o, but it only runs at 8x/8x which could hurt performance with something like 2 4870x2's lol.

 

[mlee49]

The two PCI-E slots are usually at 8x8x in CF with most CF mobo's. It's nothing like a quarter of the potential, its more like an eighth of the potential from a full 16x16x CF mobo. Here's a link for a very comparative review of the x38vsx48vsP45vsP35:

http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f22/crossfire-performance-intel-x48-vs-p45-vs-x38-vs-p35-45871/

It shows the full 16x16x vs 16x4x vs 8x8x in the review, I hope that helped answer your question.


As for a CF board that could be patched to run SLI I haven't heard of that. Only way I've heard is through a 9800 GX2 with dual gpu's in SLI.

 

[sneekypeet]

As for a CF board that could be patched to run SLI I haven't heard of that. Only way I've heard is through a 9800 GX2 with dual gpu's in SLI.

It had been hacked years ago to run the 7 series GPU's on the 975X chipsets. The X58 has a chance to do both, as the skulltrail did!

 

[mlee49]

Thanks Sneeky! I'm a newbie to the CF chipsets as I am a former Nvidiot!

 

[Damian^]

Thanks Sneeky! I'm a newbie to the CF chipsets as I am a former Nvidiot!

Go with a P45 chipset, i hear x8 x8 is not all that bad compared to x16 x16 speeds. There fantastic overclockers as well

 

[JrRacinFan]

Hiya thraxed! If you are a frugal minded budget builder like myself, a P35 if there is only a slight chance of going crossfire or P45 if you definitely will go crossfire in the future (my 975X board is 8x+8x PCIe 1.1). Whereas X38/X48 if your a hardcore enthusiast and definitely planning on going multiple gpu crossfire (3 gpu's and above).

 

[mlee49]

Yeah I think P45 is the best out atm. It looks like the P45 hold up just fine to x38 and not to shabby to the x48's

Just remember this is only two current games, other games may play differently with the match ups.

 

[thraxed]

Thanks for the explanations guys

Well i guess from whats available today, I think I'm going to go with a Intel BOXDX48BT2. Looks like the best bang for the buck.