unfortunately my motherboard (MSI DKA790gx) has 2 pcie slots with crossfire enabled, but is limited to 2 x8 lanes when 2 cards are used, and one x16 when one card is used. I am wondering if this will degrade performance much when using 2 radeon hd 4850's such as this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127401
I can get 2 of them for less than the cost of a gtx 260, which is what i'll probably get if I decide to use just one card.
can someone help me out on decidng which to get? i'm really leaning towards nvidia, as most games I will play perform better with them, but I am certainly open to ati if I can get more performance for the same money.
Now, honestly, who designed this motherboard... first, the ram slots are too close to the cpu socket, so when using a performance cooler it has to be put on backwards, so it blows toward the front of the case.
second, the pcie setup is like this:
top: x16
2nd: x4
3rd x4
4th x8
pci
pci
with no space between the bottom x8 slot and the pci slots. so when using 2 cards that take up 2 slots each, theres an extra slot above the second one and it disables one of the 2 pci slots which I need both of. this would take an extra investment of a usb wifi card or tv tuner, whichever is cheaper. I wish I had bough a proper designed sli board, but I hadnt dreamed of using 2 video cards when i bought it, and the motherboard was a steal at $85.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127401
I can get 2 of them for less than the cost of a gtx 260, which is what i'll probably get if I decide to use just one card.
can someone help me out on decidng which to get? i'm really leaning towards nvidia, as most games I will play perform better with them, but I am certainly open to ati if I can get more performance for the same money.
Now, honestly, who designed this motherboard... first, the ram slots are too close to the cpu socket, so when using a performance cooler it has to be put on backwards, so it blows toward the front of the case.
second, the pcie setup is like this:
top: x16
2nd: x4
3rd x4
4th x8
pci
pci
with no space between the bottom x8 slot and the pci slots. so when using 2 cards that take up 2 slots each, theres an extra slot above the second one and it disables one of the 2 pci slots which I need both of. this would take an extra investment of a usb wifi card or tv tuner, whichever is cheaper. I wish I had bough a proper designed sli board, but I hadnt dreamed of using 2 video cards when i bought it, and the motherboard was a steal at $85.