Ati 5850 CF

[deadeye22]

I have a sapphire 5850 on an ASUS P5E... I'm about to get a new P67 mobo and the 2500K i5 CPU, so im thinking about crossfire. Is it possible to crossfire with a different brand? ASUS POWERCOLOUR anything. Or should i sell it and get a 6870

 

[jryan388]

Yes, you can crossfire between brands, as long as they each have crossfire fingers.

 

[ubercake]

Yes again. ^+

You can crossfire different brands. I ran with two Gigabyte 5850s and one HIS 5850. One thing though... Just going by my own experience I'd recommend a single AMD card over multiple because the driver support for crossfire is just not there. You'll get great framerates, it's just the other issues you may not want to deal with. Just my opinion, based on my experience.

 

[Earnie]

Crossfire works great,have been running it since the 3870's.4870's.5850 and 5870's.no prob's.best is with the 6000 cards,almost 100% scaling.

any brand to brand will work,also has to be same series5700,5800..etc.

 

[deadeye22]

Heh the bad thing is im getting the p8p67LE B3 revision the second pciE slot is not 16x WTF? which do you recommend from asus, really i only buy asus mobos

 

[ubercake]

Heh the bad thing is im getting the p8p67LE B3 revision the second pciE slot is not 16x WTF? which do you recommend from asus, really i only buy asus mobos

Any combination with the P67 chipset is going to get you 8x/8x for two video cards.

If it's not a Pro or above edition, you're probably looking at 16x/4x (yuck). The LE is one such board (16x/4x).

The P8P67 Pro and up were boards built for multi-video card configurations.

 

[deadeye22]

The pro says its 8x8 isnt there a 16x16, wasnt X38 and 48 chipsets 16x16?

 

[ubercake]

I know.

On the P67, you get 8x/16x/16x on a Maximus IV ($350) when you use three cards. Otherwise, it's 8x/8x with two on the Pro and above. Lower than the Pro motherboard, your looking at 16x/4x or 16x/1x depending on the board.

 

[deadeye22]

so should i CF or get a 6870 instead for the p8p67pro

 

[jjb8675309]

my experience with crossfire 6870 is that the drivers were *** personally I would say avoid it, better to go for a single 6970 if you like AMD

 

[wolfram23]

For PCIe bandwidth, 8x/8x is enough for 5850s. You really only need 16/16 for, say, GTX 580 or 6970 cards (or 590, 6990).

But anyway, all P55, P67, P68 boards only have 16 PCIe lanes to work with. The only way you get 16/16 on one of these boards is if they use the NF200 chip which works great, but it's only on the most expensive boards.

That's kind of why X58 is still a good choice. Sure the CPUs aren't as good as a 2600 but you get a better motherboard (32 PCIe lanes). Otherwise gotta wait till Ivy Bridge which should be the X58 equivalent Sandy Bridge