Gigabyte Z68-AP-D3 and Crossfire?

Jhaemes · 10 Jan 2012 at 00:49

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-364-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

I haven't really found a straight answer, but would it be worth doing crossfire on this board? So far, I understand that the second card would be "crippled" due to the second PCI express slot running at x4. Or would it be best getting a £200 ish graphics card, rather than crossfiring 6850's for example?

stulid · 10 Jan 2012 at 00:52

Ideally it is a motherboard more suited to single GFX solutions only, there was a test at Tomshardware comparing the differences of Crossfire at 16X/4X vs 8X/8X, 16X/16X

Some games (sure it was F1 2010) for example did show a performance drop.

Edit.. found it - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-scaling-p67-chipset-gaming-performance,2887-10.html

beejjacobs · 10 Jan 2012 at 00:52

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/302?vs=293
You may get better performance with the two 6850s, but I'm not sure on that board. Also two 6850s will be louder, noisey, more power hungry than 1 £200 card.

What games do you play at what res? A single card may suit you just fine

Jhaemes · 10 Jan 2012 at 00:56

I currently have a GTX 550 Ti, mainly got it cheap from a friend for Skyrim.

Not sure about specific titles except for Skyrim, but it'd be nice to have the option of playing the latest games on decent settings.

stulid · 10 Jan 2012 at 00:57

Jhaemes said:
I currently have a GTX 550 Ti, mainly got it cheap from a friend for Skyrim.

Not sure about specific titles except for Skyrim, but it'd be nice to have the option of playing the latest games on decent settings.

Stick to a single GFX card then.

What PSU do you also have?

Jhaemes · 10 Jan 2012 at 01:01

I'll have a 700w OCZ ModXStream, currently waiting for the main lot of parts ; psu, cpu and motherboard.

Haven't really got a budget, but definitely no more than £200 would be good. Since I've just splashed out the cash for parts it probably won't be for a while now. Ideally, I want a better monitor first, then if I need it a new card second, third would be an i5 2500k.

stulid · 10 Jan 2012 at 01:04

Well a 1GB GTX560ti at £170-180 is about as good as it gets, closer to £200 gets a 2GB 6950/GTX560ti.

Your PSU is fine for any of these options.