Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P for R9 380 4G Crossfire

WolfMason

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Jan 8, 2016
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Would the GA-970A-DS3P be enough of a motherboard to handle the 380's in crossfire. One of the slots would be running at x4 so I understand that I would get a performance hit for that reason. Though I believe that it wouldn't be too detrimental, at least I think so. I already have the motherboard and I already have a 380 running on it. I just want to get more performance from my games and I think a second 380 would be a good upgrade. I came up on some money where I would be able to buy the second 380. I can buy a better motherboard but that would not allow me to buy a second 380, at least not in the short future.

I do have the power supply to support them in cross fire and a processor that won't bottleneck the cards. Thank you for your help.
 
I do have the power supply to support them in cross fire and a processor that won't bottleneck the cards.
You may need think about again. The PSU and the CPU+MB combo. If you have the fx8 series cpu, when you use the cpu+MB for the cf r9 380, the MB VRMs section may have overheat problem, because the MB has lower power phase count (4+1), and it will try to work hard to catch up with cf r9 380, that will cause the VRMs section overheat. Also I add the link for power consumption, it will depend on other part you had. Keep in mind the 380 is a rebrand r9 285. http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/6658/sapphire-radeon-r9-285-2gb-dual-x-in-crossfire-video-card-review/index15.html
If you have the Fx8 series cpu, you may buy other better MB, like ga-970a-ud3p ( good for cpu but same pice config), or msi 970 gaming MB ( good for cpu, and better pcie config.).



 

WolfMason

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Jan 8, 2016
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Would the ga-970a-ud3p work just fine for the config I'm looking for or should I go with the MSI 970?