I was looking at getting a Gigabyte z68 mobo for my new board. While reading up on it I saw that it says one gpu will run at 16X speed. In crossfire mode though one card will run at 16x and the other will automatically default to 8X even though its in a 16Xpcie slot. So my question is how much of a difference does that make. Its 50% slower so whats the point of using crossfire if one card is running at 8x speed and the other at 16X. Also is that 8x default on all mobo's using a crossfire config or just z68's?
Question about crossfire
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Roark
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If it is a new build then I'm with David, get the best GPU you can afford instead of buying 2 cheaper ones.
Though I'm assuming this is for future reference for if you ever want to run 2 cards?
Most motherboards actually default to x8/x8 in SLi/Xfire unless you are buying a high-end board.
As to the difference, here is a good thread on it: HARDOCP - Conclusion - GTX 480 SLI PCIe Bandwidth Perf. - x16/x16 vs. x8/x8
Though I'm assuming this is for future reference for if you ever want to run 2 cards?
Most motherboards actually default to x8/x8 in SLi/Xfire unless you are buying a high-end board.
As to the difference, here is a good thread on it: HARDOCP - Conclusion - GTX 480 SLI PCIe Bandwidth Perf. - x16/x16 vs. x8/x8
"Though I'm assuming this is for future reference for if you ever want to run 2 cards?"
Yes. Its more for if I decide to go down that road in the next couple months or year. Right now I'm willing to spend $350+ on a gpu but I don't have the money to spend 500, 600 or more on something like a 6990 or a GTX 590. So the best I can do is something like the 6970 for now and then hopefully double them up in the next couple months to year.
EDIT* just read that website and it was what I was looking for. I plan on only do one monitor for now and so if I'm reading it right and understanding it right it seems like in 16x-8X or 8x-8x there won't be to much performance lost. The biggest thing is if you do eyefinity then you can have some performce lost.
Yes. Its more for if I decide to go down that road in the next couple months or year. Right now I'm willing to spend $350+ on a gpu but I don't have the money to spend 500, 600 or more on something like a 6990 or a GTX 590. So the best I can do is something like the 6970 for now and then hopefully double them up in the next couple months to year.
EDIT* just read that website and it was what I was looking for. I plan on only do one monitor for now and so if I'm reading it right and understanding it right it seems like in 16x-8X or 8x-8x there won't be to much performance lost. The biggest thing is if you do eyefinity then you can have some performce lost.
Roark
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Exactly
Just thought of something else. Lets say I got a 6970 now and installed the video drivers. Six months down the road I decide to double it up and do crossfire. Do I have to uninstall the drivers I already downloaded then re-install them to make both gpu's work or can you just lock the new video card in, setup crossfire and go?
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No, I wouldn't think so, though it would never hurt to update the drivers at that point in time.
C0RR0SIVE
Golden Master
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Which COD? There are like, 10 versions of COD.
Opps yea I forgot about that. I play pretty much all of them WOW, MW and UO. UO though needs 10.4/10.5 drivers. Also I play COH, and BF. I don't know why but when you try the 11.X series in UO it just won't work you get corruption message. I would like to use the 11.x series for the other games but then UO won't work. So I use the 10.5 drivers and UO works and so do all the other games but its just old s***ty drivers.
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