CrossFire on M5A97

[Chaz042]

I have a XFX Radeon HD 7770 Ghz Edition, and I have the ASUS M5A97 for a motherboard. I want to get a second 7770 and crossfire them. ASUS' site says the motherboard has "Quad-GPU CrossFireX Support!" I don't know if I can because the motherboard only has one pci express x16 slot, but it does have a pci express x4 slot I just want to make sure. I'm not rich and I don't want to blow $160 on something that may not work. So, can someone tell me if this isn't possible, has reduced performance, or it just like having an x16 slot because the crossfire bridge is doing all the work would be helpful. And if someone can confirm that CrossFireX is the same as CrossFire just new that would be really nice. Thanks for help in advance and the links to the parts are below.

GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150599
MoBo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131767
ASUS Site MoBo: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/M5A97/

 

[alyoshka]

Since the making of Dual GPU on single PCBs the term CrossfireX has come into being. It's the same as CrossFire but with greater number of GPUs involved.
Since Crossfire was using just 2 GPUs, then came the CrossFire on the PCB (Single) so having 2 such cards would give you actually 4 GPUs that were Crossfired making it a kind of QuadFire....
To avoid such terminology, the new marketing gimmic or naming gimmic became CrossFireX.
So basically it's the same....

Now on that board you can Crossfire 2 Already Crossfired cards (Dual GPU Cards) making it a Quad Fire capable Mobo, but you'll have both the cards running at 4x and not at 16x....

 

[Chaz042]

Since the making of Dual GPU on single PCBs the term CrossfireX has come into being. It's the same as CrossFire but with greater number of GPUs involved.
Since Crossfire was using just 2 GPUs, then came the CrossFire on the PCB (Single) so having 2 such cards would give you actually 4 GPUs that were Crossfired making it a kind of QuadFire....
To avoid such terminology, the new marketing gimmic or naming gimmic became CrossFireX.
So basically it's the same....

Now on that board you can Crossfire 2 Already Crossfired cards (Dual GPU Cards) making it a Quad Fire capable Mobo, but you'll have both the cards running at 4x and not at 16x....

Thanks, so all I have to do is buy the other card and a bridge and plug it in?

 

[alyoshka]

Yup, that's all you need to do. Although you'll be running them at 4x.

PS. If I were you, I actually wouldn't put any money into another card right now. Instead I'd put that money into buying a much better card, not that the 7770 is not good, but, you do have the 79XX series to look at.
For all you know you might be able to sell the 7770 and get enough to add to the new budget and get a really awesome deal for a new card.

With that mobo , I'd stick to single high end cards . single or dual chip cards, but the high end ones.