PCI x1 vs PCI x16

bebopin64

bebopin64

Active Member
I bought a new mobo for my comp and recently decided i wanted to go crossfire. The problem is that it only has one pci-e x16. it has 2 pci-e x1 slots though. I have a radeon x850xt pe and I would like to crossfire it with another x850 but what kind of performance loss is there by sticking it in a pci-e x1 slot? is it even compatible? i really don't know anything about motherboards and pci slots.
 
First, you need a Crossfire ready motherboard, which yours is not.

Second, a PCI-E x1 and PCI-E x16 are a different slot, and the x850XT PE won't run at all in it, you need to buy specialized PCI-E x1 video cards (only one of I know so far, and thats for workstation use).

Even if you could run it in an x1 slot, the performance would be severly crippled.
 
you can go up in the chain of PCI-E slots, only down.
for example you can put a PCI-E 16x 8x 4x 2x 1x card in a 16x slot
you can put an 8x 4x 2x 1x card in an 8x slot
and so on and so forth.
You have to buy a mobo that supports crossfire. Mostly the mobos with ATi chipsets are good candidates.
 
Well, if you want to use crossfire then you'll have to buy a brand new mobo. SLI is used for Nvidia video cards, Crossfire is used for ATI video cards.

EDIT: people already beat me to it while I was looking up the mobo.
 
I can't find any AM2 mobos with crossfire on newegg, but AM2 is fairly new so it may take some time for AM2 crossfire mobos to released. I live in the DFW area but won't get anymore specific than that, hope you understand.
 
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