Power Supply Need?

[shadowduck]

You can save more money by moving down to the Asus P5Q Pro .. it uses P45 which is just about the same as x38/x48 (just no PCI-E x16 on both slots- makes little difference) and the board still supports Crossfire. It is only $149 which is about $100 less than the X48 board with limited differences. Before P45 you want x38/x48 for the official FSB1600 support. P45 offers that, so there is a less compelling reason to go X48.

 

[Qoatl]

Thanks again for all your help.
I'm definitely going to wait to see the price and performance of the 4870x2.
The price I quoted above includes an OCZ 700W PSU. I have a suspicion the x2 model of the card will need a lot of power, so I may need to bump that to 800. Time will tell.

 

[shadowthor]

If you were going with the quad, I would have went with the rampage. If not, I would stick with the P5Q Pro.

 

[Qoatl]

Hmmmm... I was going to wait and see what the 4000 series would do and consider buying a 4870 x2. At this point, since both the 3870 x2 and the 4870 x2 work by brute force and the only thing I am aware of that the 4000 series will do that the 3000 series simply cannot do is Dx 10.1, I think the new plan will be to wait for the 4000 series to drop the price of the 3000 series and buy a pair of 3870 x2 to run w/ crossfire. The down side will obviously be the heat and the need for a hefty power supply (I'm thinking probably OCZ 1000W with 30 amps on the 12v rail).

So... with this setup, I think I'll still need to go with a motherboard with PCI express x16 on two slots.