Bang for buck gaming AMD CPUs

[trents]

Oh right. I guess I have to read the fine print, they just don't come right out and advertise that one of the slots is limited.

At which point up the GPU ladder do you become limited by 8x/8x for a 2 card setup?

990X

You have to go up to the 990FX to get x2 16 PCI-e capability.

 

[motherboard1]

990X

You have to go up to the 990FX to get x2 16 PCI-e capability.

What I mean was what level of graphics card would take a performance hit worth noting based on 2 of them running on 8x/8x

Or if you prefer, what are the best graphics cards worth running together on an 8x/8x setup without a notable performance hit ?

 

[ssjwizard]

Any level GPU will take a tiny hit if its from the last two generations. When I went from a 990Xa-UD3 up to the 990FXa-UD3 with a pair of GTX 460s I was able to improve my 3DMark scores by maybe 2-3%. So 8x8x is fine and the difference between that an the 990FX based on pcie lanes alone is hard to justify. When you step up to a higher tier board though you do get alot of little goodies here and there.

 

[RGone]

When you step up to a higher tier board though you do get alot of little goodies here and there.

And they know the board will carry more load. Look at the difference between an Asrock 970 Ext4 and an Asrock 990FX Ext4. A lot of difference in the VRM circuit.
RGone...

 

[txus.palacios]

8x/8x is OK. 4x OTOH is not.

 

[caddi daddi]

I would also consider 1866 ram as that is where the bd and pd cpus start to really respond.
I swapped out the 1600 ram for 2133 ram in my game rig and it really made the graphics pop.

 

[skidawgz]

I would also consider 1866 ram as that is where the bd and pd cpus start to really respond.
I swapped out the 1600 ram for 2133 ram in my game rig and it really made the graphics pop.

what do you mean by "made the graphics pop"

I've read that higher mem clock speeds really moves along the APUs.

 

[wingman99]

Is there any gaming benchmarks review, to see the memory speed 1600+MHz.

 

[caddi daddi]

it just really brought out the detail in my graphics and cured a lot of minor issuses the added up to missing details.
with the 1600 on sudden scene chage it would leave artifacts of the earlyer scene in the new scene, this is all gone.
I had thought this was due to a low\midline video card. hd7770.