? Choice choice choices - replacement for CIVE MB needed

[salsoul]

Hello,

I currently have an Asus Crosshair-IV-Extreme MB, and the 8 pin 12v rail has melted 4 pins on my psu and the plastic has carbonised inside the 8 pin sockets. the board still works but every now and again it doesnt boot. this is down to the pins not making contact with the board properly. anyway to cut a long story short. Im looking to replace my board with an 990 chipset board. but none of them seem to be upto spec. I dont want to step down from the CIVE but I will need at the very least 2x pci-e full 16 lanes not 8x & 8x or x16 & x8.

I have spoken to the supplier and I can RMA at any time between my 3 year warranty. still got 2 years to go. I can get a direct replacement or my money back.

I have an Asus Ares Dual 5870 and an HD 5870,. running in tri-fire.

what troubles me is the spacing between the PCI-slots on all of the 990 chipset boards.. the Asus Ares is a 3 slot single card meaning on the CIVE im using the Ares on slot 1 and the HD 5870 in slot 3. (see image attached)

Now Ive been looking at the Crosshiar V formula (that wont work wrong spacing)
also the ASUS sabertooth again the spacing and the fact it only runs at x16 & X8

Is there a board out there that will give the the spacing and the dual x16 pci-e lanes that I dont know about..


thanks for your help guys


regards

Sal.

 

[salsoul]

OK I may have answered my own question here:

I have owned 1 asrock board in my computing life and it was a pile of poo !! about 6 years ago


has anyone experience with this board:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ASRock-990F...-Technology/dp/B005FGQLLG/ref=pd_rhf_cr_p_t_1

ASRock 990FX Professional Motherboard (Socket AMD3+, DDR3, ATX, USB 3.0, ASRock Instant Flash Technology)


the spacing will allow my Asus Ares the triple slot it needs and the 2 PCI_E is more than 2 slots away from the first:

before I pull the plug and take the plunge can anyone give there opionion on this with my setup below ?


many thanks

 

[RGone]

Is that the mobo below you are referring to? If so I did a little look thru the user reviews and though most of those type reviews "must" be taken with a grain of salt, the reviews did not sound so promising. Either the board worked and they were happy with the features or it did not work and was a POS. That is too up and down for me. Love it or hate it is not what I like to see generally. YMMV.


ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

 

[salsoul]

Hi rgone,

I looked at those mixed reviews and felt the same. There is a serious lack of choice on the 990 chipset.
MY guess is I either go with the crosshair v formula and
Sell my single hd 5870 and just run with the ares.
Very poor support on the Amd side of MB

Or get another CIVE with Beta BIOS support which I was never comfortable with

Any other idea's ??? I really would like to keep mytrifire setup as I don't suffer any driver problems.

Regards

Sal.

 

[txus.palacios]

And what about installing the "third" 5870 in the first slot?

PCIe 1 - 5870
BLANK - 5870
PCIe 2 - ARES
PCIe 3 - ARES
PCIe 4 - ARES

Here, solved. :3

 

[salsoul]

And what about installing the "third" 5870 in the first slot?

PCIe 1 - 5870
BLANK - 5870
PCIe 2 - ARES
PCIe 3 - ARES
PCIe 4 - ARES

Here, solved. :3

The rule of thumb (as far as I am aware) is that you always put your strongest card at the top and plug your monitors in that. the Ares is by far the stronger card of the 2 it may also effect the amount of Vram available. the setup I have give me 5Gb of vram if I put the 5870 at the top it may drop the Vram to 2gb max. but thatnk you for the suggestion

regards

Sal.

 

[txus.palacios]

Not at all, at least that's what I think. Both the ARES and the 5870 have the same GPU. The ARES just have a couple of them crossfired. If they weren't both the same GPUs, you couldn't even crossfire them.

Plus, logically, the system wouldn't care. The system would still see three GPUs. The fact that now, two of them are in another slot is something the system does not care about.

EDIT: 5GB VRAM? Probably not. In order to Crossfire or SLi, both GPUs must be the same with the same amount of memory. I don't know why, probably because of how the Crossfire scaling works. You have a dual 5850, with the same amount of GPU. ASUS, for merchandising reasons, sells the ARES as a 5GBish card just so that it catches your eye. But they are 2GB or so.

 

[salsoul]

Not at all, at least that's what I think. Both the ARES and the 5870 have the same GPU. The ARES just have a couple of them crossfired. If they weren't both the same GPUs, you couldn't even crossfire them.

Plus, logically, the system wouldn't care. The system would still see three GPUs. The fact that now, two of them are in another slot is something the system does not care about.

EDIT: 5GB VRAM? Probably not. In order to Crossfire or SLi, both GPUs must be the same with the same amount of memory. I don't know why, probably because of how the Crossfire scaling works. You have a dual 5850, with the same amount of GPU. ASUS, for merchandising reasons, sells the ARES as a 5GBish card just so that it catches your eye. But they are 2GB or so.

The CIVE allows you to run any version of any series of amd or nivida via the lucid hydra chip so that is possible to have a 4870 with a 5870.. but I dont run it like that.


definatly 5gb of vram in use on my pc atm, i have phots of MSI afterburners mem1 as it calls it.. over 4 gb of vram in use when playing BF3 and 5 GB system ram in use.

the Ares is 2x5870 with 2gb vram per GPU. the PCS hd 5870 has 1gb Vram card, there is no reduction in Vram when using crossfire. I have a total of 5GB of Vram to use. Im leaving work now and I will take fresh pictures of my vram usage using gpu-z and msi afterburner. there is definitely no reduction of amount of vram when using my setup.

but we are slightly detracting from the thread, Im looking for an AMD MB that is on par - equivalent to the CIVE. I do not want to change my setup of using the Ares as the slave card and the HD5870 as the master. but it was a good idea though thank you.


kind reagards

Sal.

 

[txus.palacios]

I gotta reckon I have no idea how CFX works internally, only that these multi GPU systems to work required that the GPUs were the same (both are 5870s).

But, CFX had VRAM reduction, IIRC when you pair two cards without the same amount of memory, one of them, the one with the biggest amount of VRAM gets the VRAM locked to the value of the one with the smaller amount. It sounds logical since the three GPU work in some sort of parallel way. Not to mention that if the three GPUs could use VRAM from every board, the CFX connection (comparable to PCIe 1x last time I checked) would be a bottleneck. A very big one. Because I don't see the PCIe lanes being used to share VRAM. Not to mention that that would be six and a half.

I don't know what that MEM1 may be, but if Google is correct, that can't be CFX VRAM. Your cards should now be working at 1GB VRAM each GPU. Anyway, let's wait for a guru to solve this.

For that triple slot separation, I think the only boards available would be from ASRock or from ASUS Sabertooth. Or Gigabyte UD series.

 

[salsoul]

I gotta reckon I have no idea how CFX works internally, only that these multi GPU systems to work required that the GPUs were the same (both are 5870s).

But, CFX had VRAM reduction, IIRC when you pair two cards without the same amount of memory, one of them, the one with the biggest amount of VRAM gets the VRAM locked to the value of the one with the smaller amount. It sounds logical since the three GPU work in some sort of parallel way. Not to mention that if the three GPUs could use VRAM from every board, the CFX connection (comparable to PCIe 1x last time I checked) would be a bottleneck. A very big one. Because I don't see the PCIe lanes being used to share VRAM. Not to mention that that would be six and a half.

I don't know what that MEM1 may be, but if Google is correct, that can't be CFX VRAM. Your cards should now be working at 1GB VRAM each GPU. Anyway, let's wait for a guru to solve this.

For that triple slot separation, I think the only boards available would be from ASRock or from ASUS Sabertooth. Or Gigabyte UD series.

Perhaps its because its 3 gpu's and 2 cards running @ pci-x16 and not x16 & x8 x8 that there is no reduction in vram required and it is added together. perhaps;I don't know the full story either and i wouldn't mind finding out

Its really disappointing that there isn't much choice for BD still after 9months of being released, there just doesn't seem anything that can come close to the CIVE in the way of multi gpu support. where is the CVE ?? how come that hasn't made a landing yet ? .

I guess I may have to order a direct replacement or hang on in there with what Ive got until my setup fails entirely.

Sal.

 

[txus.palacios]

IIRC, ASUS confirmed the Extreme model would be reserved for the Extreme Chipsets from Intel, and the top model for Express and AMD would be Formula.

It has nothing to do with the cards. The card is merely a PCIe bridge thingy (think, some kind of NF200) and two GPUs. We'll have to wait for the gurus.

Who is our friendly local neighbourhood graphics cards guru?

 

[salsoul]

IIRC, ASUS confirmed the Extreme model would be reserved for the Extreme Chipsets from Intel, and the top model for Express and AMD would be Formula.

It has nothing to do with the cards. The card is merely a PCIe bridge thingy (think, some kind of NF200) and two GPUs. We'll have to wait for the gurus.

Who is our friendly local neighbourhood graphics cards guru?

Yes I remember hearing that too. its a shame

Who is our friendly local neighbourhood graphics cards guru?

It would probably deserve its own thread that discussion we are in the MB section