5850 Crossfire

[Langlest]

i have a couple of questions about crossfire
i dont plan to get it anytime soon but i thought its worth finding out about it now

i have a P5Q Deluxe and im a bit confused about where the 2nd card would go?
here is a picture of it

am i right in thinking it would go in one of the black slots down at the bottom?

also would a corsair hx850w psu be enough to power 2 5850s?

 

[kmufc77]

i have a couple of questions about crossfire
i dont plan to get it anytime soon but i thought its worth finding out about it now

i have a P5Q Deluxe and im a bit confused about where the 2nd card would go?
here is a picture of it

am i right in thinking it would go in one of the black slots down at the bottom?

also would a corsair hx850w psu be enough to power 2 5850s?

Yes the black PCIE slots are for the second card.

However i do believe that the black PCIE slots will run at 8X or 4X bandwidth and not the full 16X

Your psu is more than enough

Sorry for the quote didnt really need to do that as im the first poster

 

[Langlest]

ok thanks im guessing that means i wouldnt get much benefit from it because of the slower slots

 

[kmufc77]

ok thanks im guessing that means i wouldnt get much benefit from it because of the slower slots

if its running at 8X which i think it would be you will not notice any difference hardly from 16X

4X might be a different story

 

[Langlest]

if its running at 8X which i think it would be you will not notice any difference hardly from 16X

4X might be a different story

thanks
on this site it says that the top black slot is PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot (x8 electrical)

but i have no idea what the x8 electrical part means
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2008/05/28/asus-p5q-deluxe-intel-p45-has-arrived/2

 

[kmufc77]

thanks
on this site it says that the top black slot is PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot (x8 electrical)

but i have no idea what the x8 electrical part means
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2008/05/28/asus-p5q-deluxe-intel-p45-has-arrived/2

8X it is then go ahead and crossfire

 

[Langlest]

thanks again mate
i wont be doing it anytime soon as i can run everything i need to right now
its nice to know i have the option of a cheap upgrade in the future tho

 

[Temi_D]

x8 or x4 have next to no difference on performance. Look here: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/25.html

 

[Langlest]

thanks for the info seems like it would be quite a nice improvement

 

[MoRT489]

If using two cards on a P45 board such as yours the first and second slots will run at 8x instead of 16x. On current cards (not including 5970 dual card) running in crossfire at 8x/8x sees less than a 7% performance hit when compared to 16x/16x, so def worth it.

HX750 or HX850 will both easily cope with 5850 crossfire.