new Crossfire Motherboard

[breadandbubbles]

i recently built myself a computer, and at the time i thought it a wise choice to purchase a motherboard sporting two 16X PCI-E slots (Asus P5WD2), because id hoped to utilize ATI's Crossfire in the future.

now im worried because im hearing a lot of people say i need a specific chipset. i chose the Intel 955X chipset because it seemed compatible with anything. now im hearing people talk about a new "Crossfire Motherboard"

see, this makes no sense to me. would people really want to buy a whole new motherboard just for Crossfire? wouldnt it make more sense, in regards to marketing and customer satisfaction, to allow crossfire to function with already known and released chipsets?

PLEASE respond. im so confused!

[quinriva]

Yes it would make sense. But think about this the only motherboards that nVidia SLI works on are nVidia nForce 4 SLI motherboard. It just happens that nVidia were thinking about SLI for a long time (I believe the technology was in the FX series but never turned on). nVidia prepared the motherboards at the same time, while ATI has been playing catch up; but yes you do need a motheboard with ATI's crossfire technology.

But honestly think about it. The only time SLI/Crossfire has been shown to work is on the no budget systems (read 2x7800GTX or 2xX1800XT Platnium Pro Ultra Mega Power Rangers Dinosaur Mode). Otherwise a 6800GT performs better than 2x6600GTs and it cost less. So you are paying more for less performance. The major benifit of have SLI is that you can have 4 monitors. Also if in the distant future you wish to purchase a second old card as a stopgap before a major upgrade.

Think hypothetically that SLI existed in the AGP days and you had an SLi capable 9600xt. If your computer was really old but you, couldn't afford to replace it with a nice new 6800GT (which would also mean upgrading your motheboard to a PCI Express one and consequently upgrading your CPU) then you could temporarily buy a second 9600xt to go with your current one until you can afford to replace your whole system.

On the plus you get a 50% graphics boost on the cheap, on the negative it will only last you 6-12 months until you replace your whole system.

Now with the way that crossfire works (which wasn't thought through before the original X800 series cards were made) it doesn't allow you to have 4 monitors (I not 100% sure bet pretty sure), in fact I think you can only have one or prehaps 2. This is the major downside for me as far as crossfire is concerned. Additionally have you even seen much support for crossfire? Remeber games have to support it in order for it to be of benifit. Now I know that many major games (but not all) support SLi but how many support crossfire.

Just something to think about.

[breadandbubbles]

so then what could i POSSIBLEY do with two 16X slots?!!

[quinriva]

Well you could have two graphics cards not in SLi and not in Crossfire. In other words you have two graphics cards so you can have 4 monitors.

You hate me don't you?

[IcemanND]

or get another upgrade you want that is a 1x, 2x,4x pci-e card and install it, you always wanted an 8 port sata raid card right.

[quinriva]

Apparently, don't quote me on this (it was 3am) but the next Intel board the 575? is supposed to be intergrating both crossfire and SLI. But then maybe that was just a dream?

[ripken204]

i think i heard rumors about that too. that would be so sweet

[suryad]

Wondering why you went with Intel looks like this will be clearly a gamig comp!!!! AMD would have been a better choice! I so regret having a 3.4 ghz intel....gets it a** handed to it in games and in scientific applications, media and so on!