Crossfire Bridge - blocking other PCI slots?

[tbresson]

Hi.

I'm thinking about buying a new motherboard. I found out that you can still use one gfx card on a crossfire supported motherboard. So that's great. What worries me is that if I put two cards on the board the space between them might block the usage of the PCI-E 1x port or PCI port - whatever is on the board. At least according to the pictures I've found on the net.

Is there room or will the slot be unusable if you run two cards?

Let's say there is room. Would there be some kind of heat issue between two cards? It doesn't look like there's much space and gfxcards can get really hot.

Thanks in advance.

 

[mjsharma]

which is the motherboard?

 

[tbresson]

I was thinking about the Asus P6T.

 

[mjsharma]

your 1 PCI slot will be covered by the card in first PCIE 16x slot
and there isn't enough space between your 2nd and 3rd pcie slots...
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=170&cat3_no=&prod_no=1695
i prefer MSI
and if you want to stick to ASUS
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=t4yhK6y9W9o7iQ9E&templete=2
this one has enough spacing between the slots but still your pci slots can get covered if you use all 3 pcie slots
but the msi board i showed you will have a pci slot open even if you use all 3 pcie slots

 

[wolfram23]

I agree, not enough spacing so a large card will cover a PCI lane and if you crossfire, you'll also cover your 3rd PCIe lane.

You can see the spacing on my board, a PCI 1x and a PCI lane are blocked but there's enough room that I have a sound card in between my CF 5850s and a GT 240 for PhysX on the last PCIe lane.

 

[tbresson]

Best answer selected by tbresson.