Crossfire/SLI for my Asus P8H67 Motherboard, I5 2400 3.1ghz

Bogus Bill · June 6, 2015

Hi all!

TL;DR: Is it worth putting Crossfire/SLI in my current rigg?

Currently I own a Asus P8H67 Motherboard which has a Intel I5 2400 3.1ghz CPU and a Club3D GTX Geforce 560 TI GPU. Now since the motherboard has 2 GPU slots I was wandering if it was worth to run Crossfire/SLI?

After some browsing on the interwebs I found several people who mentioned that Nvidia's SLI is not supported for the board but the box says that AMD's Crossfire is.
Is it true that this board does not support Nvidia's SLI?

If the above is true, that would mean I cannot simply buy a second 560TI GPU and run that SLI (not even sure if this GPU can do that). in which case;
Which AMD GPU would be best for me to buy times 2 and run crossfire, without them being bottlenecket by the CPU?

Overall question; Is it even worth for me to replace my current GPU (Club3D GTX Geforce 560 TI) with a Crossfire AMD setup?

*Please refrain from using experianced technical terms in your response. My knowledge is not very peaked, but I'm able to look things up on the internet.

Thanks in Advance!

Sheldon_King · June 6, 2015

Weather it is worth it is completely up to you.

As for if your board supports SLI, that would be no. SLI requires a certification from Nvidia to be able to be used (except for dual GPU cards like the GTX690 and TitanZ), which requires at least x8/x8 on the PCIe lanes. Your board runs the PCIe bus at a maximum of X16 and X4, and note that the x4 lanes are coming from the chipset (h67), which will add some latency. Ideally you want x8/x8 directly off the CPU, which with SandyBridge (intel 2000 series processors and E3-1200v1 series) you will want a P67 or Z68 motherboard for SLI of crossfire.

Try the highest tire single AMD or Nvidia GPU you can afford for now and see if you even need crossfire (chances are you will not). The best GPU I would recommend would be either a GTX970 or a R9 290 or 290x. If you want to crossfire, start with the 290x and upgrade later if you feel the need.

Also take into account you only want to SLI or Crossfire with teh top end cards 290(x)/970/980 as in games that do not support CFx and SLI you will be limited to the poerformance of one card.

Bogus Bill · June 6, 2015

Weather it is worth it is completely up to you.

As for if your board supports SLI, that would be no. SLI requires a certification from Nvidia to be able to be used (except for dual GPU cards like the GTX690 and TitanZ), which requires at least x8/x8 on the PCIe lanes. Your board runs the PCIe bus at a maximum of X16 and X4, and note that the x4 lanes are coming from the chipset (h67), which will add some latency. Ideally you want x8/x8 directly off the CPU, which with SandyBridge (intel 2000 series processors and E3-1200v1 series) you will want a P67 or Z68 motherboard for SLI of crossfire.

Try the highest tire single AMD or Nvidia GPU you can afford for now and see if you even need crossfire (chances are you will not). The best GPU I would recommend would be either a GTX970 or a R9 290 or 290x. If you want to crossfire, start with the 290x and upgrade later if you feel the need.

Also take into account you only want to SLI or Crossfire with teh top end cards 290(x)/970/980 as in games that do not support CFx and SLI you will be limited to the poerformance of one card.

Thanks for your quick response!

Yea ofc it's up to me weather it's worth the money. But I kinda mean if it's worth the trouble of replacing the 560TI with a Xfire setup. You are actually saying that Xfire in general is only worth with the highend cards due to gamecompatibillity.

For me personally just one 290 (x) would be a massive upgrade wouldn't it?

And if I'd Xfire two 290's, wouldnt they be bottlenecket?

Does the x4 PCIe bus mean that the second GPU would under-preform in any other way then it's latency?

Sheldon_King · June 6, 2015

Whether or not you will see a massive increase in performance from just a single r9 290(x) will depend on what you are doing with the card, and the game, but in general under windows with most games you will probably double your current performance (just a guess).

And yes, that is what I am saying, and it holds true for both SLI and crossfire. You should always buy the highest end card you can afford before considering crossfire or SLI, as for most non AAA games, CFx/SLI will add 0% increase due to the lack of proper profiles in the drivers.

As for bottlenecks, you should see little to no bottlenecks with most games that are not Battlefield 3 or latter (supports and eats many cores easily, especially on larger player count servers).

I can not say if it will be a bottleneck or not, as I have never tried to run over the x4 lanes before.