P35 chipset and crossfire

[carrot1401]

I am a confused person with some money

Got an x1950pro 512mb on a gigabyte p35-ds3p rev1.1 motherboard. Now, looking at a sub £200 upgrade, most likely a good 3870xt...

I understand this motherboard supports crossfire, but it disables the 3 small pci-e connectors and something about 16x and 4x electronicaly or something?!?!?!

As you can tell I am totally confused, so here are some questions:

At 1280x1024, will I see an increase with crossfire (also e8400 coming and 4gb ram)

What is this 16x and 4x crossfire thing all about? Is there any point of crossfire 3870xt* on that motherboard compared to a single 8800gts?

*Yes I know 2 3870xt's is nearer to £300 but if its worth it I'll save for it

Will my antec 500w earthwatts that came with my Sonata III case even run crossfire? Along with that; 2 hard drives, dvd and dvd-rw drives and 2 120mm fans? That spec with a single 3870xt shows it as 306w...

I do play the latest games and do have a very VERY slight preference towards ATi, but just want to know if its really worth it....

 

[dr. sarf]

One of the PCI-e slots (top one) runs at full PCI-e x16 speed, the other at x4.

Built a Sonata 3 system the other day, but can't remember if it has to PCI-e power connectors.
edit: think it only has one, after a google search but you may be able to get a molex to PCI-e adapter to run your other card, just run it off a dedicated rail.

 

[carrot1401]

Yer got 2 6 pin pci-express dongles, will it run crossfire though?? Dual 12v lines at 17A...And would running that motherboard in crossfire be worth it?

 

[ojrules]

the x16 speed and x4 speed things just mean the speed at which information can be passed.. obviously a x4 connection will bottleneck the power of the card, nevertheless crosffire drivers are usually adapted to this, so the card on the slower connection may be used for things required slower response speeds, at least thats what i got the jist of crossfire... meaning that the card on the x16 slot is not so pressured.. dual 3870 is very powerful, as long as you update drivers regularly... obviously it requires a bigger and stronger power supply than its single card advisarys, and i doubt your psu will be powerful enough to power cross fire, let alone some of the more powerful cards..

 

[dr. sarf]

Yer got 2 6 pin pci-express dongles, will it run crossfire though?? Dual 12v lines at 17A...And would running that motherboard in crossfire be worth it?

I've seen 2 3850s on a P35 board get over 17K in 3DMark06 (with an overclocked Q6600) so yeah, for sure.

Beats my single 8800GT with ease.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Few ppl on here run 2x 3870's on P35 boards, and they say they run fine, but 2x would be a waste at that res, a single card can handle 1280x1024 with ease.

 

[carrot1401]

Few ppl on here run 2x 3870's on P35 boards, and they say they run fine, but 2x would be a waste at that res, a single card can handle 1280x1024 with ease.

Cool cheers, so what about the power supply? I know it may be a waste but if its a root it may well be worth taking somewhen...

 

[LoadsaMoney]

It should handle 1x card fine, i doubt it would handle Crossfire.

 

[carrot1401]

So based on the fact I dont intend on changing that anytime soon (only got the new sonata III case saturday lol) is it worth getting a 8800gts instead (even if it may be overkill for resolution?)