hi...

i'm thinking of buyin the Asus P5Q-E (P45) Motherboard for its 3 way xfire, now i don't understand the actual workings of pci-e proper all i know is that pci-e 16 2.0 is faster than pci-e 16 1.0 .
what i want to know is if i stick 3 x 4870x2's in this board ..... 1. will i suffer performance problems 2. even though the cards are pci-e 16x will they work, i understand that most sli/xfire boards when 2 cards are put in the pci-e16 drops to pci-e 8x, but on this main board it has ( so i belive) 2x pci-e16 2.o ( which will drop to x8 when both in use ) and 1 x pci-e 16 1.0.
buit i also read somewhere that the 3rd pci-e slot would not house a 3rd card ? so what is this slot used for ? as pci-e 2.0 is backward compatible or so i believe, so what the point of a slot that can't house a 3rd card ?

It also stated it can house ddr2 ram and ddr3 so do i have the best of both worlds if ddr3 drops in price?

i am building a system but have to wait to see how long it will take to get my hands on the 4870x2 card to complete the build.

my system will consist of

Q6600 SLACR GO
1000w psu prob Themaltake
120mm cpu heatsink/fan
Corsair Twinxms-2-8500 2x2gig or may 4 x 2gig ( is this ram any good and good for overclocking systems with ?
Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000 case

thats basically it and yes vista 64 bit too.. any info on improving the build is greatly welcome.

thanks

The third PCI-E slot may technically support a card at x4, but it would be a waste of money.

If you really need that much performance you should get an x48 board.

The only reason to buy a P5Q -E is the MB cooling solution and perhaps a few OC features. Maybe an extra eSATA port or two.

Otherwise stick with the P5Q Pro OR the ASUS Rampage.

- a P5Q -E owner.

I don't believe you could even CF 3 4870x2 since the 4870x2 is technically 2 GPU's. Technically that would be 6 cards and CF supports 4 max.

If I'm wrong someone correct me.

Also why would you spend that much on video cards? No point right now. You could build an entire rig for the price of just those 3 cards

thanx dood i thought you couldn't xfire 3 of them cards but was not 100% sure because ur only using 3 xfire slots and the x2 is classed as one card even though it has 2 gpu's on it but it would be a beast of a system with a tri xfired x2's . if the mod wants to close this thread now thats cool because i have allready got my components on order, so no real point in this thread now, and gone for the Aus Rampage Formula x48 board instead Following Proximon's advice and boy its a hell of a board all glowing reviews but a bit pricey for a board.