Asus commando motherboard question which gfx card

[scorchisio]

Hope someones can help me with this i have an asus commando mobo info here

Processor Support All Intel LGA775 processors, including Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Extreme models
Northbridge Intel P965
Southbridge Intel ICH8R
Memory Support 4 DIMMs, DDR2, 533/667/800/889/1067, 8GiB max
Graphics (main) 1 x PCI Express Graphics 16x
PCI Express 1 x PCIe x4 (x16 mechanical) from P965
PCI Conventional 4 slots; PCI2.2
ATA 1 port, JMicron JMB363 PCIe to ICH8R
SATA 6 ports SATA2 AHCI, ICH8R

RAID 0/1/0+1/5/10, ICH8R
LAN Dual Gigabit, (2 x 10/100/1000), Marvell PCIe and PCI to ICH8R
Audio HD Audio, 8-channel, ADI 1988B, ICH8R
Floppy 1 port
FireWire 2-port VIA VT6308P, 1394a
USB 10 ports, USB2.0, ICH8R
I/O ports PS/2, Serial, Parallel, eSATA, 4 x USB2.0, 1 x FireWire400, 2 x RJ45, audio, optical S/PDIF-out
Monitoring ASIC ASUS AI
Form factor ATX - 12in x 9.6in
Street price as at 31/01/07 £139 inc. VAT

im wanting a 5850 am i gonna be ok with that motherboard to use one or will it have poor performance?

 

[Typhoon]

No graphic card is going to be limited by your board. An 5850 will work fine.

 

[scorchisio]

thanks for your help mate, ive been getting all sorts of conflicting information from people about it not working properly etc, i am upgrading from a 2 yr old 8800gtx. How longs it take to get one of those cool mafioso avatars?

 

[Geckovich]

100 posts I think.

 

[AndyT]

Hi there.

Good to know my first post could be helpful to someone!

I have the Asus Commando motherboard and love it. This week I replaced my trusty but struggling 8800GT with a Sapphire 5850 and the diference is immense. Crysis Warhead and Crysis run perfectly with a Q6600 at 3.0GHz. You will not regret buying the 5850 and there are no issues with the pairing of a 5850 and the Asus Commando as far as I know. I haven't had any problems whatsoever yet.

There is one thing that I am slightly disappointed in though: I also bought a Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Titanium to go with the GFX card, but it takes up a Pci-Express slot. This means that I can't now use my old 8800GT for PhysX in games as the Commando only has 2 x Pci-Ex slots.

Gutted.

You won't be disappointed in the perfromance of the 5850 though.

 

[ReturnOfTheDude]

I too have a commando, it's a good board, at one stage I used to have a 8800GTS 512 paired with it - no issues whatsoever. Don't see why a 5850 would be a problem.

 

[scorchisio]

andy thanks for your encouraging response mate, are you saying i can leave my 8800gtx in and fit the 5850 as well? i didnt think the commando had 2x proper pci slots?

 

[AndyT]

Scorchisio,

As far as I'm aware, both the pci-express slots are rated at x16 bandwidth - i.e full blown pci-express with the capability of handling 16 'lanes'. Unfortunately, due to a limitation of the Intel P965 chipset that the board is based on, you can actually only make use of 20 lanes. So.... If you install another graphics card on the second pci-ex slot, that card is limited to only x4 bandwidth. Quite what effect this has on the performance of the second card (your 8800gtx) I dont know. One of the more techy people here should hopefully be able to explain, but basically I think it might just be enough bandwidth on the second pci-ex to get some Phys-X goodness out of your 8800gtx.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong............

How you get the 8800gtx to work with the 5850 I have no idea. I'm sure there will be someone here who can help though.

 

[reflux]

If you want to get your 8800GTX working with your 5850, you need to install the 5850 in your primary PCI-E slot, install the drivers, then install the 8800GTX in your secondary slot and install the drivers.

Then you need to install this patch:

http://www.overclock.net/software-news/586844-ngohq-patch-disabled-physx.html

And fiddle about with your desktop configuration so that the GTX runs an extended monitor, so you need to plug something in to it.

But yeah, it works. Using my spare 8800GTS for PhysX now with my 5850. It doesn't deal with the smoke well on High but flags and fabrics are fine.

 

[Orcvader]

You just need to download PhysX drivers from the NVidia site, but due to a recent update they disabled PhysX if your main card is not NVidia. Theres a hacked patch to fix this though, and someone mosted a link to it somewhere I believe. I'm not sure if PhysX will work on the x4 lane.