Advice/Help on Crossfire needed.

[Max25591]

Hi Guys, - Hope you can help me out.

I have the Gigabyte Ga 965p DS4 Mobo and I'm presently running a x1900xt (HIS).

THinking about getting another x1900xt to run in crossfire as I can't afford to buy a top end graphics card.

1) One PCi-e x16 slot, and one x4. Will getting the extra x1900xt in the x4 slot make much of an impact? - Or is this only really worth doing with two x16 slots?

2) - I know I would need a crossfire master card, but can I mix brands? Could I get a saphire x1900xt mastercard and run it with the HIS?

If you could advise me I'd appreciate it.

 

[worshipme]

I think it would be better if you simply bought a new single card as adding another X1900 into a PCI-EX4 slot is not going to bring a very big performance boost at all. A very good new card is cheaper than you think: www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150275
Or this for slightly cheaper: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161211
As you can imagine the 8800GS performs slightly better than a HD 3850. Both of these cards would bring you a sizable performance increase over your current card.
To answer your second question, yes.

 

[mayorredbeard]

Do not shove a pci-e card into a 4x pci-e slot; it will flat out be a waste of money.

Look into a nvidia 9600. They're brand spanking new and offer great bang for the buck. It retails for around $170 and is a very powerful card.

 

[Max25591]

Cheers guys. I will look into getting a new single card then. Sad to see the x1900xt go in a way... It was a really good card.