Radeon 6770 Crossfire?

[theolah12]

I had recently just built a new computer here is what I have:

Asus M5A97
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Processor
Western Digital Caviar Black 500 GB SATA III
Liteon iHAS324 24X DVD-RW SATA Optical Disk Drive
SAPPHIRE 100338L Radeon HD 6770 1GB
Antec Three Hundred Gaming Case
Thermaltake TR2 W0388RU 600W Power Supply
2x-CORSAIR XMS 4GB DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333

I was looking at maybe getting another 6770 and crossfiring it. The only thing is that I only have:
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (blue)
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black)
2 x PCIe 2.0 x1
2 x PCI
I currently have my current graphics card in the blue slot. I was wondering if it would even be worth it to get another and crossfire it even though I only have a x4 slot available to crossfire? I have read some things and some people said that it would not be a big deal and some others said it would? I am not sure on what to believe if it is a huge deal or not.

 

[buzznut]

I believe you'd be better off selling the 6770 and buying a HD 6950. That board is not really built with enough pci express lanes to make it worth your while. Plus with crossfire with two lesser cards you have issues of microstuttering , added heat, etc. That's my advice.

 

[theolah12]

So basically it would not be worth it? Although I have seen some people that have 2 6770's crossfired with no micro-stuttering problems. How much performance wise would I gain/loss with the two being crossfired? I have seen about 10% fps being dropped from a x4 PCI slot but just the crossfire is what I am still unsure of.

 

[hang-the-9]

I think any game that you'd want to run dual video cards for, may be held back by the AMD CPU. Have you looked into any benchmarks of games comparing with what you have? GPU vs CPU scaling?

 

[simon12]

If your second PCIE slot ran at 8x or 16x it would be worth considering but as the second is only 4x the performance gain would be minimal

 

[buzznut]

So basically it would not be worth it? Although I have seen some people that have 2 6770's crossfired with no micro-stuttering problems. How much performance wise would I gain/loss with the two being crossfired? I have seen about 10% fps being dropped from a x4 PCI slot but just the crossfire is what I am still unsure of.

Well, I wouldn't be able to say specifically about what FPS drops may occur or how much performance would drop. In my opinion, no it would not be worth it. That's why I suggest looking at a HD 6950/GTX 560ti upgrade as you won't have to worry about how much performance drop you may experience. One powerful card is almost always a better solution to two slower cards.

 

[buzznut]

So a 970 board is not really built for crossfire. It has limited PCI express lanes. Some of those lanes are used by other components, such as ethernet. If you really have an interest in crossfire/sli, take a look at the 990X or 990FX platforms. They have much more PCI express lanes to dedicate to multiple graphics cards.

 

[theolah12]

Best answer selected by theolah12.

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been closed by Maziar