Buying two 4850's is about $100 to $150 cheaper than buying that monster 4870X2.

My question is about physical space. Looking at the HIS 4850 1GB cards, they take up two expansion slots. Are there motherboards out there that can physically accept two cards of this size?

Regards,

Dan

Most motherboards (if not all) that utilize crossfireor SLI will have a single slot in between the 2 PCIe slots. It is usually filled with a PCIe 1x slot that not many people use. So the answer to your question: yes their are motherboards out there that accept it, and most of them do. Just make sure that you have alteast one slot in between the PCIe 16x/2.0 slots and you are good to go. If you have a motherboard in mind just post it and we can confirm whether or not it will work for you.

Best,

3Ball

Most Crossfire motherboards will support two 2 slot cards. The only thing you must look out for is if you have another card(like Soundcard or RAID card) installed below the PCIe X16 slots.

As long as you do not have any other add-on cards 2 2 slot video cards will work fine.

I will use the Rampage Formula as a example

Here are the slots in order as the are installed in a tower

PCIe 1X Used for Sound Card
PCI OPEN
PCIe 16X Video Card
PCIe 1X 2nd slot Cooler
PCIe 1X OPEN *
PCIe 16X Video Card
PCI 2nd Slot Cooler

If you install two 2 slot Video cards you will loose one of the PCIe 1X and the bottom PCI slot.

* The PCIe 1x just above the 2nd video card may be useless because the Crossfire connectors limit the space to install a card.

Hope this helps.

1Haplo

I was looking at a x38 intel board.

Intel DX38BT LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX DDR3 ( I have read that the board layout is tight on this one.)

You could save some money with a DDR2 motherboard and DDR2 RAM, rather than DDR3.

Also, if you buy the HD 4870X2, you don't need an X38 or X48 motherboard any more. A (much cheaper) Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R or Asus P5Q Pro would be enough, or maybe even something with a single PCI-E 2 slot in the $100 range.

Great ideas. Thanks. I am going to have to rethink the whole crossfire setup. Saving money on MB and RAM would allow me to buy the HD4870X2

+1

Best,

3Ball