16/8/8 16/16/16? 16/16/16/16 I'm confused

I have the Asus Rampage Extreme iii, recently on the phone with Ati engineering, the fellow told me that my motherboard scaled my triple crossfire down to 8/8/8 but I was under the impression it was at 16/8/8. Is there any 16/16/16 motherboard available? I know EVGA has the quad board out that does do 16/16/16/16, as well as the UD9 by gigabyte, but these all tailor to the quad setups. I have a fourth 5870 that I could add to my gaming rig, is the gaming performance on a 16/16/16/16 THAT much better than on 16/8/8?

I'm not much for benchmarking, more for gaming and video editing, AE, cinema 4d etc.

By the way the ati engineer called my motherboard "old and outdated" what a nob head

One more thing , I noticed that all the quad gpu mobos lack the slot for my XFI sound card, do most high end gamers use onboard sound?.

well here is a comparsion of 16x/16x vs 8x/8x..
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=619246
you lose a bit of performance but not that much to really make me want to buy a true 16/16 board or for that matter a 16/16/16 board.

stick with what you got its not worth the huge price increase for a 16/16/16/16 board..

I'm pretty sure the performance hit is minimal. I think the difference between 4X and 16X is like 5%.

Good posts there, and it was a great read!

Well then what about the differences between 3x crossfire and 4x crossfire?

I have a 5870 in the box just sitting around...might as well use it.

wait wait wait, am I a total ******, or will 4x 5870's already fit on my Asus Rampage extreme iii? but they will be at 16/8/8/8 correct? I wonder if it'll fit in my level 10 case, ooooh cant wait to get home if so!

R3E doesn't support 4-way Xfire unless you have the ROG Xpander.

http://www.nordichardware.com/compo...enables-4-way-sli-on-rampage-iii-extreme.html

MattNo5ss said:

R3E doesn't support 4-way Xfire unless you have the ROG Xpander.

http://www.nordichardware.com/compo...enables-4-way-sli-on-rampage-iii-extreme.html

Click to expand...

Sort of correct and incorrect at the same time, the board natively supports quad *CROSSFIRE*, but your correct for quad SLI you need the expander. I think I might be good to go this evening I'll keep everyone posted

Thanks for the correction. I thought the R3E only supported 3-way SLI and Xfire, and the Xpander was needed for both 4-way SLI and Xfire...

Well quad crossfire works, But I'm having a major pain of a time getting triple monitors to work and to hold the correct resolution, maybe need a complete O'S reinstall