So, I thought I was all set to order the parts of my new PC, but then a lightbulb turned on. What if I want to eventually do a Crossfire setup?
My motherboard was going to be an Asus P5Q Pro P45 mobo. From what I know, Crossfire does not support the p45/p43 chipsets. Can anyone give me a good suggestion on a reasonably priced, equivalent mobo? I need at least 4 SATA ports, preferably 5-6 to give me some room to expand. Rear USB ports are not a whole lot important, 4 would be sufficient. I do not know what it is called, but I need whatever your case front panel usb ports connect to(I think they are called USB headers). I do need just 1 Firewire. 2 PCI-e 2.0 x16 ports are a must, and hopefully they can both be true x16 (not x8 and x8), and I assume pretty much every mobo has a PCI-e x1 port. 45nm support is also a must, and of course, I need crossfire support!
Can't think of much more else, most mobos do have ddr2 800 support. Brand is not a big factor, I just don't want some no-name made in China brand.
Crossfire is supported on P45, as I have read reviews about Crossfire performance on the chipset, so go for the P5Q Pro, it has gotten some good remarks from reviewers.
There is no benefit to X38/X48 for 2 card crossfire, look at the bit-tech review I linked to in my last post, in some cases the P45 based boards(P5Q Deluxe and Gigabyte P45-DQ6) beat out the X38 and X48 for performance.
