Please help with crossfire

Gullanian

Gullanian

Gullanian

Associate
Joined
25 Feb 2011
Posts
267
I currently have:

AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1090T Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3)
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C9 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit
HD5770 graphics card
BeQuiet Dark Power Pro P9 750W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply
Corsair A50 High-Performance CPU Cooler

My mobo is budget with 1xPCIE slot, and my case isn't big enough to hold my cooler.

I want to upgrade my mobo and graphics cards, I have in my basket:

Case
Cooler Master HAF X Gaming Tower Case
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-203-CM

2 of these
HIS ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-040-HS

Which should yield significant performance improvements according to:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/296?vs=301

1. Is this a good choice?
2. Which mobo should I get that can physically fit the 2xHD6870
3. I've never done cross firing before, is it easy to set up?
4. Instead of getting 2xcopies of deus ex and dirt, do you think OC might be able to change them?

Thanks :D Would love to order today :D
 
1) Yes.
2) For crossfire you want a 790GX/FX, 890GX/FX or a newer 990X/FX chipset motherboard (the 9 series are also SLI compatible) these chipsets run both PCI-E slots at identical speeds.
3) Yes, fit the second card and the bridge add the power from the PSU and the driver will detect it.
4) No, sell the other copy.


These are the cheapest boards,

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-349-GI&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=2046
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-176-MS&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=2046
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-462-AS&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=2046
 
I'm just concerned it will all fit in the case and with the heatsink? I also have a emu18020m sound card which needs a PCI slot and I'd like at least one other PCI slot free. The boards you showed me all seem like the double width GPUs would overlap all the free slots?

Is there a better one in the ~£150 range?
 
The case is huge, it will easily fit, you have seen the reviews? try youtube to get an idea of how big it is.

The A50 heatsink wont be anywhere near the slots.

I also have a emu18020m sound card which needs a PCI slot
Click to expand...

Use the onboard audio? leaving in the Gigabytes board a PCI free, a 1X PCI-E free and the very bottom 16X PCI-E free.

MB-349-GI_400.jpg
 
Ok nice, as long as my emu has a PCI slot free thats all I want :) The emu card was very expensive I couldn't use onboard sound!

I'm guessing I'd want to plug in the 2x graphics in the highlighted red slots.
 
Plug them into the slots the the top of the red boxes go through, the size of the red box should be close approximation of the area a dual slot thick graphics card takes up.

As long as your sound card is a single slot thick? then it will squeeze in the middle.
 
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