R9 280x Crossfire with ASUS M5A97 R2.0 (PCIe x16 / x4)

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Umar M

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My current system specs are as following:

CPU: AMD Fx-8120 oc to 4.0GHz
GPU: Sapphire R9 280x Tri-X
RAM: 8gb DDR3

I know that my motherboard has a x16 PCIe slot and that the second one is x4. I've done some looking around but havent really found any recent information that would pertain to the newer graphics cards running crossfire on a x16 & x4 slot.

Im just wondering what my options would be to go from here. I would love to be able to pick up another 280x as they are quite cheap right now and just throw it in. Ive read that there is a 10% performance penalty to running crossfire in x16 x4, im wondering what that means for playing games. Does that mean its not worth it?? if I can pick up a second r9 280x for around 200 is that better than selling my current r9 280x and getting a r9 290x or a gtx 780?

What would the gains be from me adding a second card - will I see at least a 50% increase in fps by adding a second card?

Im hoping that the performance bottlenext of the x4 slot having a second card in there will not be that bad, and then my next upgrade would be to the cpu by getting an fx-8350.
 
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s4in7
If the 2nd slot were an x8 then I'd say go for it, but x4 seems little low. It'll work, but you'd most likely get much better FPS on a x16/x16 motherboard.
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HEXiT

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boards with 1x16 and 1x4 pcie arent sli/crossfire boards. the second pci-e slot is for things like sata, raid and network cards. if you want to run crosfire on your system you would be wise to get a new board that supports it with 2x16 pci-e slots something like a gigabyte ud3
 
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Umar M

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Thanks for the answer, It looks as though it would be best to get at least a 16x 8x configuration for the pcie ports. though Im still not sure how much performance i will gain going from 1 video card to 2 on a 16x 4x configuration.

 
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HEXiT

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your gonna gimp the performance of the second card badly which in turn will gimp the performance of the first. so the gains would be around 30% and would come with some serious stutter. compare that to x8 or x16 where you would get 70-95%gains on the second card with way less stutter..

like i said earlier1x16 + 1x4 slot boards aint sli/crossfire boards. there not designed to be run in sli and dont have the required power delivery needed to run a second gpu. in fact theres a good chance you will damage the board over the longer term if you try to use it as a dual gpu board.
 
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Umar M

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Im not sure how to relselect this as the best answer. But thanks for explaining it like that - its exactly the answer I was looking for.
 
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