Crossfire HD7970 with this board?

[TechDude58]

I read somewhere that the 2nd PCI slot on the MSI 970A-G46 is only x4 but when I check the specs of the board it said both slots are x16. Will I get the most out of my crossfire with the MSI 970A-G46?

My specs:
FX-8150 (OC to 4.2ghz)
Corsair Vengeance 16gb 1600mhz
Corsair H60 cooling block
HD 7970
CX600 (I have an Corsair AX850 coming real soon)

So far my 4.2ghz OC is really stable... I just had 1 BSoD because the voltage was too low.

One more question. Will the ax850 be enough to sustain a crossfire and my bulldozer?

 

[bigshootr8]

You can crossfire on that board yes. At 16x/4x. However your board actually has a 16x slot and a 8x slot. So it very well possibly could be 16x x 8x. I'm not exactly sure either way yes you can. I would say though for optimal mutiple GPU configurations with AMD that a 990FX chipset would be the way to go as you get 2x PCI-E 16x/16x lanes in SLi/CF.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130637
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006654%20600008296&IsNodeId=1&Description=990fx&name=AMD&Order=BESTMATCH#

 

[maxalge]

I read somewhere that the 2nd PCI slot on the MSI 970A-G46 is only x4 but when I check the specs of the board it said both slots are x16. Will I get the most out of my crossfire with the MSI 970A-G46?

My specs:
FX-8150 (OC to 4.2ghz)
Corsair Vengeance 16gb 1600mhz
Corsair H60 cooling block
HD 7970
CX600 (I have an Corsair AX850 coming real soon)

So far my 4.2ghz OC is really stable... I just had 1 BSoD because the voltage was too low.

While in crossfire, your motherboard would do 8x/8x which is fine, negligible loss.

Honestly, your 8150 can't properly handle a single 7970, let alone 2. CF is terrible on those FX's.

You would be leaving a lot of performance on the cutting room floor.

I suggest saving the money you were going to spend on the second 7970, and wait for haswell, then CF down the line.

 

[bigshootr8]

I didn't see a advertised 8x/8x multi gpu outline. But yea I agree with you with the 7970 working in CF on a 8150 would probably take quite a bit of overclocking to get there.

I would also suggest that you only upgrade a card if you can make use of it. A 7970 on its own is enough on a single monitor solution beyond that is overkill even with a 120 hz monitor that hz a higher refresh rate.

 

[getochkn]

From the manual. Easy to download and verify facts before everyone just guess what it does.

-PCI_E2 supports up to PCIe x16 speed (when PCI_E4 s empty) or PCIe x8 speed (when PCI_E4 is installed)
-PCI_E4 supports up to PCIe x8 speed

8x/8x will be crossfire or sli mode.

 

[bigshootr8]

Right okay yea I was going to do that just didn't want to download the PDF. I wish that these companies the gigabytes, the msi's would just do what ASROCK, and ASUS do they label the speed of the SLI/CF configurations on the spec sheet doesn't seem to hard to do.

 

[TechDude58]

I'm running the my single HD 7970 100% gpu all the time I also saw the BF3 PC give away, it uses a crossfire HD 7970 with the 8150 and it's running the game at 200fps or so they said.

One more question. Will the ax850 be enough to sustain a crossfire and my bulldozer?

 

[maxalge]

I'm running the my single HD 7970 100% gpu all the time I also saw the BF3 PC give away, it uses a crossfire HD 7970 with the 8150 and it's running the game at 200fps or so they said.

One more question. Will the ax850 be enough to sustain a crossfire and my bulldozer?

200fps is total BS outside single player.




Yeah 850w is plenty, with room to spare for overclocking. Just make sure it's a quality unit.


Save the money, wait for haswell.

 

[TechDude58]

200fps is total BS outside single player.




Yeah 850w is plenty, with room to spare for overclocking. Just make sure it's a quality unit.


Save the money, wait for haswell.

I already bought the fx-8150 and so far it's doing it's job real well