Crossfire with x16/x8

[jwminaz]

I recently purchased a 5770 graphics card and am already considering upgrading to a Crossfire configuration; however, my current motherboard only handles x16/x8 mode. Would it be worth it to get a new motherboard that would handle the full x16/x16 Crossfirre mode?

 

[darkling]

No one upgrades the base of the computer to get better graphics performance. Buy a better single graphics card if you want better visual performance. You must post full specs to get a clearer answer though.

 

[shadow187]

16/8 is perfectly find for crossfire. You'd lose about 1-2FPS over a 16x slot.

 

[BeCoolBro]

^+1.Consider that even if you had an x4 slot,the drop would be 5% with a 5870.With your 5770 it would be closer to 2% and as the x8 slot has double the bandwidth,I'd say you would get a 0.5-1% performance loss from the reduced bandwidth.

 

[microterf]

you're fine.

 

[17seconds]

Hardocp.com has a series of articles comparing the performance of SLI/Crossfire setups using x16 vs. x8 vs. x4 PCIe lanes:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/08/16/sli_cfx_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x16x8

Quote:
"Gameplay performance can be summed up very easily and directly. We experienced no differences in the gameplay experience between x16/x16 SLI or CFX compared to x16/x8 SLI or CFX. The fact is you have to run at insanely high graphics settings just to detect the one to three frames per second differences we documented. With lesser resolutions and quality settings the difference in frame rates becomes so small that it is not detectable. Then in some instances we actually saw the x16/x8 configuration run faster."