iv been lookin for a motherboard

kiel367 · 3 Jan 2011 at 13:48

has to be 775 ddr2 and have crossfire capabilities

i came across this p5kpl on another site i wont mention, and it saya the pci-e are 2 x PCI Express x16 (1 x16 mode, the other at x1 or x4 mode)
so am i right in assuming this wont be full crossfire as one would always be slower?

stulid · 3 Jan 2011 at 13:58

correct.

pastymuncher · 3 Jan 2011 at 13:59

The P5KPL has only a single pci-e slot so something is not right. See here.

If you are looking at a P35 board, one slot will run at the full 16x but the other will only run at 4x. Even worse, it will only be pci-e 1.1 slots so half the bandwidth of a P45 board which has pci-e 2.0 slots. The 4x slot would severely cripple any card placed in it.

kiel367 · 3 Jan 2011 at 14:03

its the P5KPL/1600 S/L 1333FSB i went on google shopping after entering it in there an found one site with one on it really cheap, but im guessing it will probably be a waste of time lol

pastymuncher · 3 Jan 2011 at 14:07

Waste of time as you will be crippling the second card so badly. G31 northbridge with the ancient ICH7 southbridge too.

Have a look for a cheap or second hand P45 based board such as the Asus P5Q range. Even though they can only run two cards at 8x it's pci-e 2.0 which is the equivalent of pci-e 1.1 at 16x and will not cripple the cards.

kiel367 · 3 Jan 2011 at 14:12

just found a p5q pro turbo relatively cheap but its like 70 quid without the vat lol

Loko · 3 Jan 2011 at 16:23

I'm not sure if this applies to Crossfire but certainly in SLI going from 16x to 8x to 4x lanes makes virtually no difference.

Comprehensive test here.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pcie-geforce-gtx-480-x16-x8-x4,2696.html

pastymuncher · 3 Jan 2011 at 19:12

That's pci-e 2.0. He was looking at a pci-e 1.1 board which has half the bandwidth of pci-e 2.0. It makes a big difference in this case.