P67A-C45 Upgrade

ToejaM · 29 Oct 2011 at 12:53

In my sig is my current motherboard/spec. I'm looking for a board for crossfire and to eventually get another 5870.

Going to sell the board I have now which I think will go for around 60ish and I'm happy to put about 40 to that to make it up to 100.

I'm looking at this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-169-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1906 as its the crossfire version of what I have and the board I have now has served me very well. I see this board has 2 16x pci-e slots to which would be ideal right?

Any advice?

pastymuncher · 29 Oct 2011 at 13:33

The second slot is hardwired at 8x according to MSI's website. Both slots would run at 8x in crossfire anyway which is fine.

ToejaM · 29 Oct 2011 at 13:36

What speed do the pci-e start to become too slow for graphics cards? I heard we're barely using x8 and certainly not anywhere near x16!

pastymuncher · 29 Oct 2011 at 13:39

With both slots at 8x there is only a 2-3% performance hit compared to 16x, sometimes it's even less. It's really only when you get down to 4x and below that it really starts to impact on performance.

ToejaM · 29 Oct 2011 at 13:44

Ah ok so there is a difference.. hmm so what board would give x16 in both slots?

Surveyor · 29 Oct 2011 at 13:53

ToejaMz0r said:
Ah ok so there is a difference.. hmm so what board would give x16 in both slots?

None, unless you want to spend £230 on the Asrock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 Intel Z68.

pastymuncher · 29 Oct 2011 at 14:02

To be honest you are not really going to notice it. For the sake of 2-3% (or possibly less) is it worth paying a fortune for a motherboard when a much cheaper one will do 99% of the things that a more expensive one will do?

ToejaM · 29 Oct 2011 at 18:00

Yeah thats what I was thinking really. Will be the one up from my board then I guess