Quick question... With a P55A chipset motherboard and a pair of GPU's (Crossfire or SLI), would I get the full SATA 6GB/s and USB 3.0 throughput/bandwidth? I have read loads around the web but I am little confused. I am aware of the 8x PCI-E limitation with 2 GPU's but I have read some things about not being able to run either a 6GB/s HD (e.g. SSD) and/or get full USB 3.0 bandwidth at the same time. The motherboard I am thinking of in this scenario is a Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4 rev. 1.0 running 2 x 5770's. I am thinking of adding one of the newer SSD's coming out as well as USB 3.0 external HD for backup. Can anyone summarise the situation?
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3436#sp In other words, think about dropping the Crossfire or forget the SATA3/USB3 stuff.
Cheers, it looks like I will either have to get a new GPU (hmmm, GTX 560 sounds nice) or a 6GB/s SATA & USB 3.0 add on card like the Asus one. Thanks for the help.
Narwen is right. If I stick with 2 x 5770's, the on board SATA 6GB/s & USB 3.0 will "operate at normal speed" e.g. SATA 3GB/s & USB 2.0 due to the limited PCI-E bandwidth. Narwen is also right about the Asus SATA 6GB/s & USB 3.0 card - it takes a PCI-E x4 slot and the UD4 would only have x1 slots available with 2 GPU's installed. I think I am going to go for the UD4 anyway, then buy a single card to replace the 5770's. It just boils down to when I get get the money together (as always). Thanks all for your help, rep dished out for your contributions.
