Cheapest way to crossfire two 5770's

[mrfunnypickles]

hey there, i apologize if this is in the wrong section, i can move it if so.
before my questions here is the mandatory list

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
gaming only
2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
500 CAD
3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
Canada
4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture.
motherboard wise i only like asus or gigabyte, more leaning towards asus.
5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
case, powersupply (750 watt antec) a bunch of sata harddrives, ide dvd drive, monitor
6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
i cant seem to find any answers to my questions
7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
default
8. WHEN do you plan to build it?
june 2010
9. What resolution do you use?
1440x900

Okay so here goes, i am getting two 5770's for a good price and would like to use both in a crossfire setup, Why? because i never did this and i would like to try,
Does the motherboard need to have two pciexpressx16 slots or can one of them run x16/x8
or x8/x8? Or does this not even matter for these cards?
So all i need is a motherboard, cpu and ram. the cheaper the better. any help will be appreciated thank you.

[_dangtx_]

you can run them at 8x, shouldnt see much of a difference especially at that resolution. when you say good price, well if you got them already tehres no point. i would rather go for a single more powerfull card now(altough,repeating myself many times over, id wait a bit)

500 cad...hmm....hard to say but you may use your chip and ram in 775/am2+/3 mobo that will do crossfire.

[Raserei408]

My main question is why you can't just run the new GPUs on your current motherboard, RAM, and CPU. If you're currently on stock cooling you could pick up a Hyper 212 Plus, OC your processor (and a fair bit too) and run the GPUs on your board's dual PCI-E x16 slots.

Anyway, if you feel compelled to upgrade your platform in addition to your GPUs, and you've got $500 to do it, I'd say go for an i5 750, a P7P55D, and 4GB of DDR3 memory. That should come out to about $500, depending on the deals you find.

[mrfunnypickles]

Originally Posted by Raserei408

My main question is why you can't just run the new GPUs on your current motherboard, RAM, and CPU. If you're currently on stock cooling you could pick up a Hyper 212 Plus, OC your processor (and a fair bit too) and run the GPUs on your board's dual PCI-E x16 slots.

Anyway, if you feel compelled to upgrade your platform in addition to your GPUs, and you've got $500 to do it, I'd say go for an i5 750, a P7P55D, and 4GB of DDR3 memory. That should come out to about $500, depending on the deals you find.

hmm, I didn't even think of that, although it would run at x16 on one and x4 on the other, (asus p5b deluxe) seems kinda ghetto, unless it really doesn't matter. I have had my e6400 at 3.20 ghz on my arctic cooling freezer 7 pro. so that's no problem. by good price i mean i got them for free from a friend that is upgrading. another question, price wise its pretty much the same if i go the amd route or the intel route, but i was wondering if there is any future proofing for both sockets? like 6 cores on the am3 socket in the future.. is it a possibility?

[Dr_BenD_over]

The x16/x4 on the P5B Deluxe ain't great, but it does work. Keep in mind that the x16 slot is on the NB and the x4 slot is on the SB so you get some CPU overhead as well (been there, done that)

[Raserei408]

Hm. Thought they both ran at x16. Guess the stuff I'd been reading was misleading.

Yeah, it'd work, though you might see a drop in performance. Regardless, I'd give it a shot; you already own the hardware and you're not buying anything that would be going to waste. Doesn't cost you a thing and if the performance isn't enough then you can go out and get whatever set of stuff you wish.

[MarkOne]

Originally Posted by Raserei408

Hm. Thought they both ran at x16. Guess the stuff I'd been reading was misleading.

Misleading..... just go at the good place when you want to know something :

from Asus website :

2 x PCIe x16 (blue @ x16 mode, black @ x2 or x4 mode)

looks that I know how to read too.

[Raserei408]

I checked a review that just said it had two PCI-E x16 slots, so I assumed they worked at x16-x16. That fact has been rectified. I'm sorry I affected you by being mislead and correcting the mistake before you showed up.

[jcmaz]

Sell the Intel combo and get a MSI Crossfire mobo (G45) at NCIX which is on sale for $69 + 4gb DDR3 ($100) + AMD 965 ($200) + Coolermaster 212+ ($30) and OC the crap out of it :)