Crossfire 2 4850s on Abit AT8 32X Socket 939 Xpress 3200?

[wpjiscool]

Hi there,

I have found an Abit AT8 32X Socket 939 board cheap, and I was wondering if if woud be able to run 2 4850s in crossfire. The reason I ask is as I'm aware the board uses the Crossfire xpress 3200 chipset, which, as far as i can gahter from my own research, is a slightly older crossfire techonology. Will the 4850s still work in Crossfire on this board? What sbout the Crossfire bridges.

I need advice pretty quick if I'm gonna get hold of it, so a quick response would be greatly appreciated!

Many Thanks!

 

[Maziar]

Hello and welcome to the forums
Yes you can,that board supports CF at dual 16x mode so you can use 2 4850's on it but you may have bottlenecks because the socket 939 CPUs are old

 

[saaiello]

Yes it should work but heres your problem running 2 4850s on that board will not be very good. The reason is that even if you put the best CPU that will work on that board it will bottleneck the crap out of those cards so IMO get a better motherboard if you are planning on using 2 4850s.

 

[wpjiscool]

Very quick response! Thank You!

Is it still worth it if I can pick it up cheap (like £20-40)? I already own one 4850 512mb, so a second I could get for ~£50.

My processor, which I upgraded a month ago is an Opteron 175, and atm I have 2gb of OCZ platinum RAM.

Also, I will still need to use the two Crossfire bridges, wont I? I have a 500W antec Basiq cpu, is that sufficient for crossfire?

 

[wpjiscool]

PSU, sorry

Also, I am doing this upgrade to run BFBC2 at higher settings, will I get any improvements?

(Sorry the edit button doesn't work )

 

[saaiello]

BFBC2 needs a more powerful CPU to run at higher settings because a single 4850 should have no problems maxing out. I have a 9800GT which is slightly slower then your 4850 and I can play with maxed out setting and get around 50fps average. So my suggestion would be to ditch the 939 and upgrade to a better AM3 CPU A Phenom II X3 or X4 would be good and a decent motherboard can be bought for as low as $200 and just reuse the DDR2 ram you already have.


It is so not worth buying that very very dated motherboard since your processor cant even fulfill the single 4850s needs.

 

[Maziar]

+1^
Getting a new CPU/motherboard will give you a good boost,also getting 4GB RAM is a good choice too

 

[wpjiscool]

BFBC2 needs a more powerful CPU to run at higher settings because a single 4850 should have no problems maxing out. I have a 9800GT which is slightly slower then your 4850 and I can play with maxed out setting and get around 50fps average. So my suggestion would be to ditch the 939 and upgrade to a better AM3 CPU A Phenom II X3 or X4 would be good and a decent motherboard can be bought for as low as $200 and just reuse the DDR2 ram you already have.


It is so not worth buying that very very dated motherboard since your processor cant even fulfill the single 4850s needs.

Problem is I'm using DDR ram, which cost me £50. I'm not in that much of a need to upgrade; maybe I'll leave it for a couple of years and do a full upgrade then. I just thought this upgrade would be quite cost effective, but it seems its not worth it...

If I were to upgrade now I'd probably go Intel seeing as though they're on top of the CPU atm, while AMD are best for graphics.

If it goes for say under £30 though, shall I go for it? It does mean I can install more RAM (allows up to 8gb) and will probably allow me to overclock better as my present MB is limiting my freq. to 232.

It's that or start saving up!

 

[saaiello]

Problem is I'm using DDR ram, which cost me £50. I'm not in that much of a need to upgrade; maybe I'll leave it for a couple of years and do a full upgrade then. I just thought this upgrade would be quite cost effective, but it seems its not worth it...

If I were to upgrade now I'd probably go Intel seeing as though they're on top of the CPU atm, while AMD are best for graphics.

If it goes for say under £30 though, shall I go for it? It does mean I can install more RAM (allows up to 8gb) and will probably allow me to overclock better as my present MB is limiting my freq. to 232.

It's that or start saving up!

Like I said before not a good choice you are throwing your money away as for over clocking on Average those Opty 175s only get upto 2.4ghz on overclocks so you aint gonna see much more then 2 to 300 mhz OC. AMD are actully quite good for gameing since most games are very GPU dependant but you still need a decent CPU to feed those GPUs for a budget gaming rig AMDs are perfect what I listed for you will give you a huge increase in performance.


Reuse your DDR2 RAM

Motherboard:
ASrock - £61.36
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166041

CPU
Athlon II x4 630 £80.18
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176579

 

[wpjiscool]

Like I said, I only have DDR RAM, not DDR2, also BFBC2 is the only game I play that's giving me any problems, so although those links you sent to me are very useful, I think I'll leave it for a bit.

Thanks a lot for your help though, guys!