cross fire question

[Monkey]

Hey everyone,
I was wondering how to tell if a mobo can support cross fire?
Does it have to say that it can or as long as it has 2 pci-e slots it will be able to cross fire.
And if I do cross fire and one PCI-e slot is 16x and the other is 8x will my cards slow down to 8x to match? and if this is true then will I still get better performance over running one card at 16x or is the 2 at 8x still better?

 

[NightSurge]

1. The motherboard has to be Crossfire Supported.
2. I think they would probably match, but I have also heard they simply run at different speeds where the first runs at full 16x and the second at 8x.
3. You will still get better performance out of 2 cards in 8x/8x or 16x/8x than 1 in 16x.

 

[Monkey]

Thanks surge.
one last question.
Does the performance show in games (i.e make them run faster/better) or is it mainly for higher resolutions?

 

[veg1992]

Crossfire and SLI mostly work at higher resolutions, where the games become more GPU dependent..

Where as lower Resolutions are more CPU dependent, in which a high clocked Dual-Core CPU or a many core CPU (depending on the game) would be better than a higher edn GPU

In a nutshell:

Low Res- CPU Intensive
High Res- GPU Intensive