Current system:
Gigabyte P55-UD3R
i5 / 750 currently stock - soon to do moderate OC
8GB DDR3 1333
HD4850 1GB (Gigabyte fanless)
TT 750W XT (not yet installed)
Cosmo S (adequate cooling and power for second GPU)
So this motherboard has a 16X and a 4X PCIE slot. (only CF is supported, SLI is NOT)
I have seen people using LGA775 systems with this slot configuration do Crossfire using 4850 cards and it seems to scale well - 4X is probably enough bandwidth in most scenarios.
I am trying to decide if it would make sense to add a second 4850 - probably another passive card like the one I have because I am a little obsessed with fanless video cards.
I am curious as to the experience of other people - how would dual 4850s run with 16X and 4X slots?
What if I sold the 4850 and went to a higher level card like a 4890 - will those scale as well in this slot configuration? (in CF)
How would a single 4890 compare to dual 4850s in this system?
I have also wondered about getting a midrange nvidia card for physx processing but I know nvidia is messing with their drivers to try to block this when you use a non nvidia card. I am sure people will continue to hack that so it works with ATI but I don't like to run a platform that is being persecuted by the manufacturers (ie: Snowleopard on a PC, etc)
Of course a 5870 card would be a great single slot solution but price and availability are not on my side right now.
I think I can get a matching fanless 4850 for about 120ish.
Gigabyte P55-UD3R
i5 / 750 currently stock - soon to do moderate OC
8GB DDR3 1333
HD4850 1GB (Gigabyte fanless)
TT 750W XT (not yet installed)
Cosmo S (adequate cooling and power for second GPU)
So this motherboard has a 16X and a 4X PCIE slot. (only CF is supported, SLI is NOT)
I have seen people using LGA775 systems with this slot configuration do Crossfire using 4850 cards and it seems to scale well - 4X is probably enough bandwidth in most scenarios.
I am trying to decide if it would make sense to add a second 4850 - probably another passive card like the one I have because I am a little obsessed with fanless video cards.
I am curious as to the experience of other people - how would dual 4850s run with 16X and 4X slots?
What if I sold the 4850 and went to a higher level card like a 4890 - will those scale as well in this slot configuration? (in CF)
How would a single 4890 compare to dual 4850s in this system?
I have also wondered about getting a midrange nvidia card for physx processing but I know nvidia is messing with their drivers to try to block this when you use a non nvidia card. I am sure people will continue to hack that so it works with ATI but I don't like to run a platform that is being persecuted by the manufacturers (ie: Snowleopard on a PC, etc)
Of course a 5870 card would be a great single slot solution but price and availability are not on my side right now.
I think I can get a matching fanless 4850 for about 120ish.
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