X16/x4 and athlon II bottlenecks

[mardal]

hello

people often come to me for advise on what to buy for their new computer setup. But i have found myself being puzzled by 2 questions:

1st
on a x16/x4 PCI 2.0 mobo what is the strongest crossfire/SLI configuration i should recommend? would a 2x5770 setup be bottlenecked by it or would it have to be more powerful GPUs to be bottlenecked by the x16/x4? like 2x5850 would suffer performance on a 16/4 mobo compared to a x8/x8 or x16/x16?

2nd
What is the most powerful GPU setup i should recommend with a athlon II x3 or x4 setup in GPU intensive games? would it be completely unbalanced to use 5850 in crossfire or a single 5970 with the athlon II?

links to reviews, tests and charts would be appreciated.

thx in advance

 

[kiban]

A week ago, I found a very very nice benchmark about sli/crossfire in combination with a lot of different cpu, at 5 resolutions each.
If I remember correctly there was no difference between a corei7,i5 and e8400 clocked or not in fps performance.... can't remember the athlons.

Here it is a benchmark with the athlon II x4, sry I can't remember the other benchmark, I'm trying to find it right now but I have my browser history deleted yesterday so.....

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-gaming,2403-4.html


I don't believe in such "bottleneck" that is some kind of obsession this days. Many claim a E8400 is bottleneck for a 5870, and crossfire, 2way sli, I believe not!!
Dual cores are doing so fine, that there is no performance increase over the i5,i7 in games that doesn't require you to have more than 2 cores...oh well, I will get flamed for this most likely.

 

[mactronix]

A week ago, I found a very very nice benchmark about sli/crossfire in combination with a lot of different cpu, at 5 resolutions each.
If I remember correctly there was no difference between a corei7,i5 and e8400 clocked or not in fps performance.... can't remember the athlons.

Here it is a benchmark with the athlon II x4, sry I can't remember the other benchmark, I'm trying to find it right now but I have my browser history deleted yesterday so.....

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-gaming,2403-4.html


I don't believe in such "bottleneck" that is some kind of obsession this days. Many claim a E8400 is bottleneck for a 5870, and crossfire, 2way sli, I believe not!!
Dual cores are doing so fine, that there is no performance increase over the i5,i7 in games that doesn't require you to have more than 2 cores...oh well, I will get flamed for this most likely.

If you get flamed they are idiots, People are obsesed with CPU's it seems these days you are quite correct that most gaming wont see a differance worth the price increase.
As Timop said in GPU intensive games you really dont need a lot at all, there are more games these days that do show a marked differance with a higher CPU but in my book not enough of them to spend out on a higher speced CPU.
Here is a good article http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/core-i3-gaming,review-31852.html

Mactronix

 

[mardal]

Thx for the replies and the links

Is there any articles that tests the difference between x16/x4, x8/x8 and x16/x16 crossfire?