ViciousXUSMC
New Member
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2008
- Messages
- 117 (0.02/day)
System Name | Vicious's Rig |
---|---|
Processor | Q6600 @ 3.6ghz @ 1.4v (Windows) |
Motherboard | Asus P5Q Deluxe |
Cooling | Thermalright Ultra 120 Extrme with S-Scyth fan |
Memory | 2x2gb Mushkin DDR2 800 |
Video Card(s) | 2x Visiontek 4850 @ 675/1000 |
Storage | 2x 640gb Western Digital |
Display(s) | 37" Westinghouse LVM37-W3 |
Case | Antec P182 Special Edition |
Audio Device(s) | X-Fi Xtreme Music |
Power Supply | PC Power & Cooling 750w Silencer |
Software | Windows Vista x64 Ultimate |
Benchmark Scores | 3dmark06 18,582 |
I just built my new computer, and I feel I made a great build and all the right choices until just the other day I found one piece of information that really sort of upset me and gave me that ikky feeling in my stomach.
Based on this article: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/intel_p45_vs_x48_crossfire_performance/index.html
There are pretty much saying that due to the x8/x8 split for crossfire on the P45 it has a pretty big disadvantage compared to the x38/x48 chipsets with full x16/x16.
I built my entire system around the idea of that great sale for the 4850's at my local best buy only 150$ each so 300$ for the pair. I also loved the P35 chipset so figured P45 was a perfect choice and thus what I went with. (I normally do not even fathom the idea of dual card setups but this was a good exception)
I am just looking for confirmation that this article is correct from other experts because I cant see it being right. Maybe the numbers are true, but I feel its not due to the bandwidth of the pci-e slots and it has to be something else.
Sorry for the long thread but let me explain.
First of all I have done various testing in the past to determine when a slot will bottleneck a card because there is very little information that I can find on the net to determine this. I found that in my bosses computer with a P35 chipset and a 9600gt I was able to get about 3000pt in 3dmark06 with a 2x PCE-E 1.0 slot, and then increasing that to a 4x slot I got just short of 10,000 points. That shows a ton of bandwidth from just 2x to 4x. And that was 1.0 spec and its doubled for 2.0 spec.
So I cant reasonably conceive how a 8x 2.0 slot will hold back a 4850 as 8x 2.0 is 4x faster than that 10,000 mark. I know thats not a valid comparison since 3dmark06 is synthetic and also nearly half of it is cpu score, but I am leaving alot of room for error when a 4850 scores like 13,000 stock and it has room for "40,000" in a 8x slot.
The next common sense idea is that all the dual gpu core cards like the 9800GX2 or soon to be 4870X2 they are basically two cards together in one, and currently the fastest single slot is 16x. Thats basically allowing the bandwidth of that one card to be the same as splitting it into two cards each with 8x. I have not heard anything about a 16x slot getting even close to bottlenecking one of those cards.
Still tho with all that known I wont rest easy until I know for sure I made a mistake going with P45 or not. Since my goal was to finally have a high end setup that can play all my games at full 1080p, if that article is correct I really screwed up.
Here is my build: http://forum.desktopreview.com/showthread.php?t=234528
In short:
Q6600 @ 3.6ghz
4gb DDR2 @ 800mhz
2x 4850 675/1000
3dmark06 18,500
Its doing great for grid, CoD4, and even Crysis (well not so much Crysis I am getting artifacts of sorts supposedly crossfire related) but that extra 4 or 5 fps would really help in Crysis, but I dont know if I would be willing to sell and rebuild with a new mobo.
Based on this article: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/intel_p45_vs_x48_crossfire_performance/index.html
There are pretty much saying that due to the x8/x8 split for crossfire on the P45 it has a pretty big disadvantage compared to the x38/x48 chipsets with full x16/x16.
I built my entire system around the idea of that great sale for the 4850's at my local best buy only 150$ each so 300$ for the pair. I also loved the P35 chipset so figured P45 was a perfect choice and thus what I went with. (I normally do not even fathom the idea of dual card setups but this was a good exception)
I am just looking for confirmation that this article is correct from other experts because I cant see it being right. Maybe the numbers are true, but I feel its not due to the bandwidth of the pci-e slots and it has to be something else.
Sorry for the long thread but let me explain.
First of all I have done various testing in the past to determine when a slot will bottleneck a card because there is very little information that I can find on the net to determine this. I found that in my bosses computer with a P35 chipset and a 9600gt I was able to get about 3000pt in 3dmark06 with a 2x PCE-E 1.0 slot, and then increasing that to a 4x slot I got just short of 10,000 points. That shows a ton of bandwidth from just 2x to 4x. And that was 1.0 spec and its doubled for 2.0 spec.
So I cant reasonably conceive how a 8x 2.0 slot will hold back a 4850 as 8x 2.0 is 4x faster than that 10,000 mark. I know thats not a valid comparison since 3dmark06 is synthetic and also nearly half of it is cpu score, but I am leaving alot of room for error when a 4850 scores like 13,000 stock and it has room for "40,000" in a 8x slot.
The next common sense idea is that all the dual gpu core cards like the 9800GX2 or soon to be 4870X2 they are basically two cards together in one, and currently the fastest single slot is 16x. Thats basically allowing the bandwidth of that one card to be the same as splitting it into two cards each with 8x. I have not heard anything about a 16x slot getting even close to bottlenecking one of those cards.
Still tho with all that known I wont rest easy until I know for sure I made a mistake going with P45 or not. Since my goal was to finally have a high end setup that can play all my games at full 1080p, if that article is correct I really screwed up.
Here is my build: http://forum.desktopreview.com/showthread.php?t=234528
In short:
Q6600 @ 3.6ghz
4gb DDR2 @ 800mhz
2x 4850 675/1000
3dmark06 18,500
Its doing great for grid, CoD4, and even Crysis (well not so much Crysis I am getting artifacts of sorts supposedly crossfire related) but that extra 4 or 5 fps would really help in Crysis, but I dont know if I would be willing to sell and rebuild with a new mobo.