P45 or X48 for Crossfire

ro55o

ro55o

ro55o

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Hi guys,

My brother is looking for a crossfire capable motherboard as the one he's got is a seriously poor overclocker (to be honest it's just a crap board in general, the Asus P5N32-E SLI, from the fantastic Nvidia 680i range :p). He's got a 4870 just now, but will be looking to add another in the future. My question is would an X48, at almost double the price, offer a huge difference in crossfire over a P45 board? Also what board would you guys recommend.
 
p45 should be fine. It uses pci-e 2.0 so has double the throughput of previous models. That means that even though it only has 2 8x slots they are effectively able to perform at 16x pci-e 1.0 speeds! :)

Sasve your cash and go p45.

Nice mobo's.

gt
 
Cheers gt, I didn't think the X48 were really worth the premium over the P45 boards. Any P45 you'd recommend? He's got a Q6600 and wanting a decent OC. I was having a look at the biostar I45 board, the specs look pretty impressive.
 
Having tried both gigabyte and asus P45's the asus was the better of the 2.

Not sure about biostar, not had a chance to play with 1 of those before :p
 
Asus P5Q Deluxe, great board, i had lots of probs with an Abit IP35 PRO and got it swapped for the P5Q no issues at all.
Running Crossfire 4850's again, no issues, very good board.
 
The P45 ASUS boards are highly praised around here so they would be an easy choice. Much more economical to go for these than the more expensive higher end X48 boards. Unless you game at ridiculously high resolutions with high AA/AF or something, then there really is no need for the 2x 16x PCIE slots. For average use, there is barely much difference so 2x 8x PCIE is sufficient enough.

If you want to go for a Gigabyte board, then the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P would be suitable. I personally have the step down, non-Crossfire version of it, the UD3R and its extremely simple at overclocking. A Q6600 should be able to go to 3.2-3.4Ghz no problem with some simple settings, unless you have a bad CPU. Plus, the motherboard is nice to look at with the blue anodised plated heatsinks if you want the bling, thought the ASUS ones are no different too.
 
I've just ordered a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R to replace my P5N32-E SLi.

My past two main PC boards have been Asus and they've always been problematic, wheres I've got a Gigabyte in both my HTPC and sister's PC, as well as few a builds I've done for people and they're been great.

Like Phat says though, you'll need the UD3P version if you want Crosssfire.

:)
 
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