Crossfire question

[kjlambert]

Hey all,

Sorry for the basic question but my specs are as below in my sig - with my MB there is another PCI-E slot and I was wondering if I can Crossfire with that. I was going to plunk in another of my vid card perhaps - worth it? The main is 16x but the second seems to be 8x - does that work?

Sorry, but not familiar with Crossfire/SLI stuff.

Thanks!

 

[Trotter]

If this is your mobo then, yes, it supports CrossfireX.

If you get get another card at a good price ($170 w/$20 MIR card + free shipping right now) it would be worth it.

 

[kjlambert]

Thanks again Trotter - always there with an answer!

Yep, that's my MB. Just wasn't sure about the 8x and 16x. The cards are a good deal right now so I thought if it would make a good difference, what the heck.

Thanks again.

 

[snowsurfer]

Don't worry about lane speed, you can check out this article from Tom's, but basically this is what you want to know (taken from that article, (c) tomshardware.com):

While we did see a fairly large difference between x8 and x16 slots when a single card was used, adding a second card shifted our limit to CPU performance. That is to say, for most of today's tests, a faster CPU would be far more important than dual x16 slots in achieving the ultimate SLI performance.

That answer presents its own set of questions, since our high-flying Core i7 CPU was already pushed to 4.00 GHz. Most builders simply can't go much higher with a daily-use gaming machine.