AMD crossfire boards do exist?

[Krazy K]

I need a recommendation of a upper lever AMD/crossfire boards. I found the ASUS M3A79-T deluxe but there has to be more than one that costs this much and had all the bells and whistles. MSI, DFI and EVGA have struck out thus far. Does Soyo still make good boards?

 

[b1lk1]

Any 790GX board is what you want for current AMD Crossfire.

http://www.ncix.com/search/?categoryid=0&q=790gx

There are 6 right there and they are very Phenom friendly too.

 

[Krazy K]

I found most of those at least once all around the web. What is the sudden interest in on-board video again, is it part of the 790GX? That's something that I will pay for that I will never ever use, unless no one is around to make me eat my words.

 

[Rob Williams]

Well, mATX motherboards don't cost near as much as full ATX boards for the most-part regardless, so the price that the IGP costs is probably negligable. I do agree though... I'd never use it either. Some who want to keep heat and form-factor to a minimum might appreciate it, though.

At most, the IGP would cost a few dollars... nothing major.

 

[Kougar]

790GX combines both the better overclocking southbridge and a half-decent IGP. The idea is when your $300 GPU is idle it can be turned off and your IGP runs the system, cutting down on power draw. For users with SLI or Crossfire systems, the power savings would be significant.

 

[Rob Williams]

790GX combines both the better overclocking southbridge and a half-decent IGP. The idea is when your $300 GPU is idle it can be turned off and your IGP runs the system, cutting down on power draw. For users with SLI or Crossfire systems, the power savings would be significant.

Good point, I wasn't even thinking along those lines.

 

[Krazy K]

790GX combines both the better overclocking southbridge and a half-decent IGP. The idea is when your $300 GPU is idle it can be turned off and your IGP runs the system, cutting down on power draw. For users with SLI or Crossfire systems, the power savings would be significant.

Nor I. I had a KVM switch once, which would be the idea solution for a setup like this but it never worked right and went back. The d-sub would also be adequate in this case, since your running something less demanding. Does Overdrive let you completely shutdown your PCI GPUs?

 

[Kougar]

Only the motherboard can handle the powerdown/up of GPUs via software I think? I just know the GPU is only fully turned off when switching to the IGP, otherwise it sits at idle even if you use a KVM switch or turn the monitor off.

I'm more familiar with NVIDIA's Hybrid SLI which does the same thing. But AMD's does as well, from what I understood that was the main selling point for putting an IGP in an enthusiast chipset. As y'all have said, there really isn't any other reason to have it around...

 

[b1lk1]

I have yet to hear of anyone even having this working. At best, you can use a low end GPU that equals the IGP for Crossfire, but the whole idea of having a high end GPU in there while the IGP takes over has yet to be.

 

[Krazy K]

Well for now I have to stick with nVidia since ASUS is upgrading my m2n-sli to the m2n32-sli since they don't have any more m2ns on the shelf.
The best laid plans of mice and men...