Can the asus P8Z68-V Gen3 support 3 way crossfire? If not what shall i get
- Thread starter gandalfs
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techgeek
Splendid
- Apr 11, 2004
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Quad CrossFire and Quad SLI are only supported if you are using two dual GPU cards.
As for tri CrossFire, the first two slots are PCI-E 3.0 / 2/0, these will run X8 X8 if your have them populated by graphics cards.
The last slot is PCI-E 2.0 and will run at a max of X4 (if enabled in the BIOS), and it shares bandwidth with:
The PCIe x16_3 slot shares bandwidth with PCIe x1_1 slot, PCIe x1_2 slot, USB3_34 and eSATA. The PCIe x16_3 default setting is in x1 mode
I'm not sure you will see great scaling beyond regular CrossFire. Especially if you go with the newer AMD cards that use the PCI_E bus rather than the CrossFire bridge.
As for tri CrossFire, the first two slots are PCI-E 3.0 / 2/0, these will run X8 X8 if your have them populated by graphics cards.
The last slot is PCI-E 2.0 and will run at a max of X4 (if enabled in the BIOS), and it shares bandwidth with:
The PCIe x16_3 slot shares bandwidth with PCIe x1_1 slot, PCIe x1_2 slot, USB3_34 and eSATA. The PCIe x16_3 default setting is in x1 mode
I'm not sure you will see great scaling beyond regular CrossFire. Especially if you go with the newer AMD cards that use the PCI_E bus rather than the CrossFire bridge.
techgeek
Splendid
- Apr 11, 2004
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You might be alright with two, but I think you'll be disappointed by the scaling with three. Since these cards rely on the PCI-E bus to pass buffer data to the master card for compositing, the third card maybe bandwidth restricted on PCI-E 2.0 X4 mode.
techgeek
Splendid
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Another thing you may have failed to consider is the enormous power requirements needed to run 3 of these cards.
What power supply do you have? I would guess without going to a PSU calculator that you'd need a good quality 1000W supply or better to run three 290's.
What power supply do you have? I would guess without going to a PSU calculator that you'd need a good quality 1000W supply or better to run three 290's.
techgeek
Splendid
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A further thing to consider is AMD / ATI hasn't ironed out all there frame pacing issues in Crossfire and they are only further exaggerated with more than two cards. I could be wrong here, but the frame pacing fixes that they do have in place only cover DX 10 and higher. I don't believe they've gotten around to fixing them on DX 9 games yet.
techgeek
Splendid
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I would say you should be alright with 2 cards as far as what your platform will support.
As for frame pacing that will be game dependent. As I'm sure your also aware, some games just don't scale well or at all with multi-GPU systems. So your mileage will vary depending on the game.
I'm sure that 2 X 290 will be nearly perfect for 4K gaming. With the caveat of Watch Dogs which can use more than 3GB of VRAM for textures set to Ultra. However in this case having 3 cards versus 2 isn't going to help in this instance. It's purely about the amount of VRAM.
I'm not sure if you'll be looking at a bottleneck with an i5 2500K, but you always have the option of overclocking if you find that you need a little more grunt on the CPU end of things.
As for frame pacing that will be game dependent. As I'm sure your also aware, some games just don't scale well or at all with multi-GPU systems. So your mileage will vary depending on the game.
I'm sure that 2 X 290 will be nearly perfect for 4K gaming. With the caveat of Watch Dogs which can use more than 3GB of VRAM for textures set to Ultra. However in this case having 3 cards versus 2 isn't going to help in this instance. It's purely about the amount of VRAM.
I'm not sure if you'll be looking at a bottleneck with an i5 2500K, but you always have the option of overclocking if you find that you need a little more grunt on the CPU end of things.
techgeek
Splendid
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Well since I don't know your exact configuration short of you motherboard, CPU and your video upgrade, I took some liberties in selecting components for a well rounded system. A 1 HDD, 1 SDD, ,1 ODD, 5 120 mm fans, a few USB powered devices. I also gave you a little room for capacitor aging. The calculator spit out 815W recommended. However that doesn't give you any room to overclock.
Now as far as cheap. With your proposed upgrade, I wouldn't be considering "cheap" unless you like lots of game crashing, BSOD's and hours of troubleshooting. However EVGA has a good line of supplies. I would consider the EVGA SuperNova 850W G2. It's gotten really good reviews, it comes from a good OEM (Super Flower), and it's very competitively priced compared to other quality PSU's in it's power range. The other suggestions would be XFX or Seasonic in the same power range. These are quality supplies and should handle your system as I configured it plus a little left over for some overclocking.
Now as far as cheap. With your proposed upgrade, I wouldn't be considering "cheap" unless you like lots of game crashing, BSOD's and hours of troubleshooting. However EVGA has a good line of supplies. I would consider the EVGA SuperNova 850W G2. It's gotten really good reviews, it comes from a good OEM (Super Flower), and it's very competitively priced compared to other quality PSU's in it's power range. The other suggestions would be XFX or Seasonic in the same power range. These are quality supplies and should handle your system as I configured it plus a little left over for some overclocking.
techgeek
Splendid
- Apr 11, 2004
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Do you have or have access to another system you can try the card in? Assuming you've installed all the drivers for your motherboard (particularly chipset) and other devices correctly, there shouldn't be a software reason that it's crashing. Particularly not with WEI (no matter that is a ridiculously stupid metric for system performance).
What game(s) have you tried?
What game(s) have you tried?
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