HD 5850 crossfire

[lordofcattown]

Hey all, i am purchasing a new computer soon and saw the new HD 5850 cards came out. My question is, if i get dual cards, crossfire, do i HAVE to have a crossfire ready motherboard?? Thanks!

 

[hunter315]

yes, your motherboard must be crossfire ready because it requires a bit in the chipset that splits the load between the two cards, and most boards that are not crossfire ready do not have 2 PCI-E express slots capable of running at atleast 8x/8x. To get the best out of twp 5850s in crossfire you should really have 16x/16x crossfire that is provided by x58 and 790FX chipsets.

 

[lordofcattown]

What about hybrid crossfire? I see one that is about $120 cheaper, would that work? its 785FX

 

[hunter315]

Hybrid crossfire is only useful with low end cards, it puts the IGP and the discrete card in crossfire to help boost the power of lower end cards, it will not support 2 discrete cards in crossfire.