Get a P35 and wait for the 3890 or get an X38 and Crossfire 3870's now...

[HeX]

As title really...

I'm in the process of doing a full system overhaul and I have the option of getting a X38 and a couple of 3870's now...

Or getting a P35 and chucking my good ol' FX5900 PCI-E and waiting out the 3890 at the end of the month (if rumours are true...) and potentially saving myself a chunk of cash by not splashing out on an X38...

What would you do?

 

[PurpleHaze]

Get the x38 and buy 2 cards at the end of January so you have effectively 4 card crossfire.

If you have the money of course.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Depends on how often you care to upgrade, I like to swap things about more often than average but when it comes to the mobo I prefere to get 6-12months use out of it.

The Intel® P35 Express Chipset is looking like a very 'solid' purchase at the moment, its had several months to 'mature' and has most bells and whistles that one would need.

You mention your interested in a crossfire setup which is something I have considered also, mainly out of hardware curiosity but the whole 'two cards' concept still doesn't look like its ready for prime time yet vs a single card solution. No doubts though that Crossfire/SLI support is a lot better today than its ever been.

While discussing crossfire it seems that you will get slightly higher frame rates when using an X38 chipset, I believe this is due to the fact that both cards get connect via PCI-E x16 whereas on the P35 the first card is connected via PCI-E x16 and the second is much lower (x4 or x8? I can't remember).

The PCI-E 2.0 spec on the new mobos 'may' start to prove useful when used with future cards like the HD3890 (3870x2?) which start throwing much data across the PCI-E BUS.

 

[Cyanide]

Would the 3870x2's count as 4 gpu's and thus need a Crossfire X motherboard?

 

[schumi84]

Would the 3870x2's count as 4 gpu's and thus need a Crossfire X motherboard?

Yes, even though only 2 of the 4 pci-e slots will be taken up

 

[Big.Wayne]

Would the 3870x2's count as 4 gpu's and thus need a Crossfire X motherboard?

I'm not sure actually? I thought CROSSFIRE-X was to allow four seperate PCI-Express cards to be combined?

I see no reason why you couldn't setup two HD3890's in a regular CROSSFIRE set-up on a P35 or X38 mobo?

 

[Cyanide]

I'm not sure actually? I thought CROSSFIRE-X was to allow four seperate PCI-Express cards to be combined?

I see no reason why you couldn't setup two HD3890's in a regular CROSSFIRE set-up on a P35 or X38 mobo?

All depends on how they've implemented it I suppose. Guess we'll have to wait until Feb to see some proper specs? It'd give the790fx's a boost if they're the only ones that can use 2 3890s

 

[HighlandeR]

That would be a bit silly but then again AMD do like to put the highend stuff on another level !

Would be rather impressive if people could get 2x cards have 4 gpus trying crysis

 

[HeX]

Well, i've put my upgrade plan into the hands of ATi now.

Bought myself a nice ASUS P5K-E/WiFi, Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme, and 4GB G.Skill PC8000.

I'll be living with the awesome power of a PCI-E FX5900 128MB until the end of Jan, or whenever it is AMD/ATi decide to release the HD3890/3870X2 or whatever they call it...