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rvjones10   06-18-2009 at 05:15:45 PM

I am upgrading current system on a budget. I purchased 2 MSI ATI RX3850 OC (512/256bit) Graphics cards on the cheap and want to crossfire them. I picked up a core 2 duo 8400 3.0ghz and I was planning to get this mother board:

GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS5 LGA 775 Intel X48 (crossfire support at 16x both slots)

Any thoughts on this? and does my power supply have the juice to handle this? my power supply is:

RAIDMAX VOLCANO RX-630A 630W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular


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Bronze Home Brew badge Proximon   06-18-2009 at 05:31:10 PM
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No to the PSU, the 3870s are not very hungry but the Raidmax is junk.
http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/323050.aspx

Corsair 650TX would be one good choice.

You do NOT need a $190 board to crossfire. See this review:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3508

Then get that board:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128358

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------------------------------ My Guide to choosing parts
A big list of recommended parts
Troubleshooting Guide w/links
 Reply to Proximon
rvjones10   06-18-2009 at 06:08:42 PM
- 0 +

Proximon wrote :

No to the PSU, the 3870s are not very hungry but the Raidmax is junk.
http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/323050.aspx

Corsair 650TX would be one good choice.

You do NOT need a $190 board to crossfire. See this review:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3508

Then get that board:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128358







Is there a big performance drop (graphically)on the motherboard you recommended with regards to the PCI slots not being 16x on both? I think it said it was 8x/8x in duel mode. That is what was driving me towards that Mobo.

Reply to rvjones10
Bronze Home Brew badge Proximon   06-18-2009 at 11:37:02 PM
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It's not very important, especially with slower cards in CF at lower resolutions.

If you were talking about a couple big cards at the resolution of a 30" monitor, then you might see 10 FPS difference.

Here is a full test with 2X 4870s:
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 095-5.html
NOTE: This is not done with the superior board I linked.

Here is about the most EXTREME difference in the boards:
Note the 3.3 FPS difference at 1680x1050... and that is with more powerful cards.
http://media.bestofmicro.com/3/O/171204/original/crossfire-scaling_08.png

------------------------------ My Guide to choosing parts
A big list of recommended parts
Troubleshooting Guide w/links
 Reply to Proximon
ohiou_grad_06   06-19-2009 at 02:41:50 AM
- 0 +

I think I'd dump the 3850's on ebay, and maybe try to pick up a 4870 on the cheap on newegg.

Reply to ohiou_grad_06
rvjones10   06-21-2009 at 02:15:53 AM
- 0 +

thanks for the knowledge proximon,

and ohiou_grad_06, that definitely crossed my mind.

I appreciate the feedback

Reply to rvjones10
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