Hybrid CrossfireX card for GA-880GMA-UD2H motherboard

[Bluecure]

Can u please help me with the following.

As the motherboard manual suggests I want a graphic card that utilizes Hybrid CrossfireX capability so i can have dual graphics with the motherboards embedded HD4250 chip.

1. Does this motherboard use PCI Express x 16 or PCI Express 2 x16  ??

2: Can you recommend a GIGABYTE brand graphics card for £50 or less which will do the job??

Thanks

[Badbonji]

1. The PCI-e slots are version 2.0. However, these are backwards compatible (1.1 cards will work fine etc.)

2. For that budget I believe the HD5570 or the GT430 will be the best you can get for your money, depending on your preference. I think they are roughly on par with each other, depending on the game.

What games will you be playing? These cards aren't very strong, and whilst they will handle most games on low/medium settings today they will struggle in the future.

[Dark Mantis]

There are a copuple of things to watch here though.

Firstly if you are planning to use your onboard graphics as part of your crossfire setup you are limited to certain boards.

Secondly if you are planning on using two dedicated graphics cards they will need to be ATI Radeons but you will only be able to use single slot versions as there is not much room between the two slots.

[Bluecure]

Thanks for your replies. I will be playing mostly DirectX 9.0c games as i only have XP 32 bit.
I understand i need a 64 bit OS like Vista or 7 to run DirectX 10

BTW if I upgraded to Win 7 64 bit , would i get better frame rate performance?