I read that review, what the hell is going on with the P45? I thought that 2x PCIe8x 2.0 had the same bandwidth as 2xPCIe16x and that would be enough for modern days videocards even for the likes of the HD48xx series.
I was really surprised to see that large gap in performance which occurs at higher resolutions and AA/ AF.
Didn't expect that the verdict was to buy X38/X48 over P45...
But... this review claims the opposite of the Tweaktown review:
http://legionhardware.com/document.php?id=761
Legion Hardware claims that P45 is faster than X38 and little behind X48 concerning CF performance.
Are both there reviews bollocks? Did they both messed up testing. I would like think that X38 and X48 perform the same, they both run 2x PCIe16x with CF, so how can there be a 10% performance gap?. And how come that with the Legion review the P45 chipset scores rather high and with the Tweaktown review it performs badly?
Conclusion Tweaktown:
This is really a very interesting article and is something people need to be taking note of. The first thing you need to be checking is if you're reading a review where Crossfire is being tested. Make sure that the board there using is a x16 / x16 motherboard. The results really do speak for themselves and it’s clear that there is a performance difference between a x16 / x16 configuration which the X48 offers, and the x8/x8 one on the P45.
If you’re really thinking about going down the Crossfire path, we would be highly recommending that you spend the extra money to go to an X38 or X48 based motherboard over the P45. Of course, if you’re not then it doesn’t really matter. With one card the P45 runs at x16, which is exactly what you want.
Conclusion Legion:
Now when testing with the new hit title Devil May Cry 4 we found that a typical P45 setup is going to be 36% faster than a P35 system at 1920x1200 when running Crossfire Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards for example. The X48 was also roughly 6% faster than the P45 chipset, and I would suggest that this is a best case scenario for the high-end X48 chipset. That said, this did make the X48 around 15% faster than the older X38 chipset. ( you must be joking right? never heard of finetuning c'mon.... )
For the most part the X48 is just 5% faster than the cheaper P45 chipset, while this chipset held roughly the same margin over the older X38 chipset. Therefore as we see it, X38 owners really would need to purchase an X48 motherboard to see any real performance gains, while the P45 is a massive step up from the P35 chipset when talking Crossfire performance.
What happened to clear and trustworthy reviews these days?
Bookmarks