Advice on Crossfire

Bundies · 17 Jan 2010 at 11:08

Hi,
Has anyone got 2 x 5870s in crossfire on a gigabyte ex58 ud5 board as i am thinking of banging another one in there but it looks kind of tight betwwen the pcie slots and if possible any advice on what to watch out for if anything..
Thanks

rolypolyman · 17 Jan 2010 at 11:33

Bundies said:
Hi,
Has anyone got 2 x 5870s in crossfire on a gigabyte ex58 ud5 board as i am thinking of banging another one in there but it looks kind of tight betwwen the pcie slots and if possible any advice on what to watch out for if anything..
Thanks

Is there not 3 X Pci-e X 16 on that board and if correct could you not put one card in 1st slot and second card in 3rd slot keeping them well apart, or is that not possible.

Bundies · 17 Jan 2010 at 16:59

ex58 ud5 pci slots

rolypolyman said:
Is there not 3 X Pci-e X 16 on that board and if correct could you not put one card in 1st slot and second card in 3rd slot keeping them well apart, or is that not possible.

Hi mate thanks for your reply and yes there is another but its only x8 do you know if this makes much of a difference....

BigRazer93 · 17 Jan 2010 at 17:37

Bundies said:
Hi mate thanks for your reply and yes there is another but its only x8 do you know if this makes much of a difference....

Nope, there will be no difference.

rolypolyman · 17 Jan 2010 at 18:56

Bundies said:
Hi mate thanks for your reply and yes there is another but its only x8 do you know if this makes much of a difference....

Negligible.

Essexraptor · 17 Jan 2010 at 18:58

have same board and Xfired 5870's.

The only thing that may cause a prob is clearance over the usb and case headers if you move one down to the x8 slot as far as I can see!

Essexraptor · 17 Jan 2010 at 19:01

rolypolyman said:
Negligible.

Is this from your own experience?

rolypolyman · 17 Jan 2010 at 19:13

Yes, I checked before I bought my two vapor-x cards as I had not done crossfire before and my m\b only supports 1 X 16 and 1 X 8. I have benched my cards and the difference between 16X and 8X on the second card is negligible.

Link.

Seems to make sense to me though the maths of it is beyond me. :confused:

Essexraptor · 17 Jan 2010 at 20:12

Thanks

for the link. Could not fathom all the tech maths either!!

Bundies · 19 Jan 2010 at 15:25

Essexraptor said:
have same board and Xfired 5870's.

The only thing that may cause a prob is clearance over the usb and case headers if you move one down to the x8 slot as far as I can see!

Hi mate
Thanks for the information.. and thanks to all whos posted so far..

One of the reasons i want to put another card in is because my brother has a 8800 gts card and he gets 7.5 on the windows experience and hes taking the **ss out of me as my windows experience for graphics is only showing a 6.. :mad:

We are both running windows 7 x64

Did you put the second graphics card in the other 16x slot and if so i assume it fits ok..Is it worth doing.
The other thing is whats the temps like...

'Wes · 19 Jan 2010 at 15:30

Hmm, never seen crossfire as appealing, always thought overclocking a card is a cheaper way and probably more beneficial than crossfire due to support.

'Wes · 19 Jan 2010 at 15:31

Bundies said:
Hi mate
Thanks for the information.. and thanks to all whos posted so far..

One of the reasons i want to put another card in is because my brother has a 8800 gts card and he gets 7.5 on the windows experience and hes taking the **ss out of me as my windows experience for graphics is only showing a 6..
We are both running windows 7 x64

Did you put the second graphics card in the other 16x slot and if so i assume it fits ok..Is it worth doing.
The other thing is whats the temps like...

Backup a sec, only 6? I'm getting 7.4.

MoRT489 · 19 Jan 2010 at 15:57

difference between running at 16x and running at 8x is at most 4-7% from reviews, cba to search for link.

Probably would be a tight fit in the two 16x lanes but i cant believe they would make the slots too close provided no aftermarket cooler is fitted to the gfx cards.

niggyg · 19 Jan 2010 at 15:58

The windows experience score means very little, real world benchmarks are a more reliable rating system.

You can hack the system to give you a bigger number. That should save you money!

'Wes · 19 Jan 2010 at 15:59

niggyg said:
You can hack the system to give you a bigger number. That should save you money!

Lol, spilt my drink.

Bundies · 19 Jan 2010 at 16:57

niggyg said:
The windows experience score means very little, real world benchmarks are a more reliable rating system.

You can hack the system to give you a bigger number. That should save you money!

Thanks for the info but i wasnt expecting that..lol hack the system...lol

Im interested show me the way lol...

Bundies · 19 Jan 2010 at 16:59

'Wes said:
Backup a sec, only 6? I'm getting 7.4.

Jesus why the hell am i only getting 6... any ideas..its a fresh install and up to date drivers..

Auraomega · 19 Jan 2010 at 17:04

Ignore WEI, it's a pointless waste of time. I got a higher rating for graphics before I installed a driver, go figure :rolleyes:

{SAS}TB · 19 Jan 2010 at 20:30

I have 2x5870 in CF on a UD5 and they are close - they also raise the temps of each card by c10 degrees with the "top card" being c10 degrees higher than the bottom (does that make sense?)

As for using th x8 slot (and this may just be my case) but I can only fit a single slot GPU in there due to the pci sheild / back of the case

Mak3R · 19 Jan 2010 at 20:40

Hmm something aint right, i get 7.5 on WEI with my 4870 :/