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Motherboards X79 SLI/Crossfire user's best friend

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by feathers, 14 Apr 2012.

  1. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    Having recently discovered that my 2 x 560ti running x8 x8 on my Z68 were running into bandwidth issues on BF3 ultra settings because of their 1gb GDDR, I'm curious to see what the new systems like X79 have to offer. It looks like X79 is the new X58. The motherboards offer x16, x16, x8, x8. That's impressive when you compare it to the rather severe limitations of Z68 offering only dual x8.

    I don't plan on running 2 x 680 for reasons of power consumption, but then I didn't plan on running 2 x 560Ti SLI either but I went nuts and bought 2 last year. That SLI running on x8 x8 was absolutely fine with all games except BF3 on ultra and the bottleneck turned out to be the x8 x8 since when I removed one of the 560's and ran with a single on X16, I was suddenly able to run BF3 ultra for the first time.

    http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-375-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2174

    4x PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots (X16, X16, X8, X8)

    So I wonder why I'm running Z68 when X79 exists? I think the reason is that the first processors for X79 were insanely expensive and for anyone running a single GPU, socket 1155 is fine.

    Since my mobo has PCIe 3.0 capability, if this extra bandwidth is unlocked with ivy (superhot) bridge and seeing as the 680 is PCIe 3 then that should increase the x8 x8 bandwidth on dual SLI.
     
  2. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead It's big, and it's clever.

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    Have a read of this thread. Simon and I did some testing.
     
  3. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    Ahhh yes. What's ironic is that I was the last person posting in that thread and that was before I realised how much the x8 x8 was killing my dual 560ti 1gb on BF3 ultra. The irony!

    "A minimum would be x16/x8 if you plan on running SLI or Crossfire. But expect a average of 10% lost at 1080p and more as your resolution increases. " - If I'd been running the 560's in this way it would have given the extra bandwidth necessary for BF3.

    I will be interested to see if the new PCIe 3.0 encoding brings real benefit with Ivy's bridge running dual x8.
     
  4. dunx

    dunx ITX is where it's at !

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    The fact that PCI-E 3.0 is twice as fast makes it a given that you will want/need to jump on board.

    I run an X58 with 4x 16x PCI-E2.0 cards and even with NF200 in the system it's much more capable than 2x8x on my 1156 system.

    dunx

    P.S. I would only go to X79 next because of the higher system spec. not just the apparent speed of the z77... but I'm in no real hurry for a year or so...
     
  5. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    No hurry for you to change really is there. X58 was such a high spec system it still runs well today for gaming with multiple GPU.

    I don't feel the need to change my mobo or cpu now. Only had the Z68 since this year and now with the 680 it's fast enough for what I want to run.

    I've noticed my PC power consumption has fallen to in idle as well since going 680. 114 watts. Not bad since I'm running at 4.9ghz.
     
  6. xxxsonic1971

    xxxsonic1971 W.O.T xxxsonic1971

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    x58 still cracks the nut.
     
  7. dunx

    dunx ITX is where it's at !

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    It still bugs me that mine won't behave at 4.2GHZ or over.... :D

    dunx
     
  8. Uxon

    Uxon Minimodder

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    Although I've never been much of a fan of multiple gpu setups I still like my x58 build and I'm glad I have plenty of pcie bandwidth in case its ever needed.
     
  9. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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  10. andyb123

    andyb123 What's a Dremel?

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    yes, this is a really annoying bug, I went X79 specifically for the extra PCI-E lanes and 3.0 and nvidia won't let me use them without a registry hack
     
  11. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    But they will fix it won't they?
     
  12. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    Or not.

    If it validates, it will run PCI-E 3.0. If not, then not.
     
  13. Seb.F

    Seb.F Minimodder

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    I just used a registry hack to enable the 680 to run on PCIE 3.0 x16.

    Also - I'm not up to date with crossfire technology, but I've been told it's true that, with multiple GPU setups, the performance hit on Crossfire gets bigger when compared to SLI on these newer cards due to both the PCIE lanes and the fact that, for instance, in a quad setup, the nVidia cards' bridge is a duplex and therefore each card only talks to each other, but Crossfire every single card has to talk through the last section of bridge to the first card in the system, causing a lot of traffic along the bring?

    Is that true or is it just rubbish?
     

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