Will this MoBo swap work?

[DevonK]

I'd been happily using an Asus P8P67 WS Revolution as my Crossfire platform for the last 3.5 years, but the slot for the second 6970 has died and I cannot use any other slot on the board for the second card. (Death of slot confirmed by: card swapping, diagnostic LED on mobo).

Unfortunately there are no new WS Revolution mobos to be found. In fact there are few Asus mobos still around that will support my i7 2600k, let alone have the slots to run Xfire properly. My best bet looks to be an Asus P8Z77 or a GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD4. I'd simply buy a more powerful single video card but they are all PCI-E 3.0 which my mobo does not support.

Question is - can I simply move my existing boot drive onto this mobo, keeping my apps/data/Win 7/64 install as-is? I realize that there will be a need to install new mobo drivers of course. (And what is the best tool for getting rid of the old ones - DriverSweeper?)

Finally a tip: my case is one of the Silverstone Ravens with the mobo external connectors on the top rather than the back. I wonder if the mobos cannot handle heavy GPU cards in that layout - not engineered for it.... thus my failure. Certainly wasn't overheating, OCing, or overvolting. It may be best to avoid this layout.

 

[Rav3n]

I'd been happily using an Asus P8P67 WS Revolution as my Crossfire platform for the last 3.5 years, but the slot for the second 6970 has died and I cannot use any other slot on the board for the second card. (Death of slot confirmed by: card swapping, diagnostic LED on mobo).

Unfortunately there are no new WS Revolution mobos to be found. In fact there are few Asus mobos still around that will support my i7 2600k, let alone have the slots to run Xfire properly. My best bet looks to be an Asus P8Z77 or a GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD4. I'd simply buy a more powerful single video card but they are all PCI-E 3.0 which my mobo does not support.

Question is - can I simply move my existing boot drive onto this mobo, keeping my apps/data/Win 7/64 install as-is? I realize that there will be a need to install new mobo drivers of course. (and what is the best tool for getting rid of the old ones?)

Finally a tip: my case is one of the Silverstone Ravens with the mobo external connectors on the top rather than the back. I wonder if the mobos cannot handle heavy GPU cards in that layout - not engineered for it.... thus my failure. Certainly wasn't overheating, OCing, or overvolting. It may be best to avoid this layout.

Actually PCI-E is backward compatible. And you lose very little performance with a single PCI-e 3.0 card on a 2.0 slot. You'd be better off probably just buying a better single GPU.

 

[DevonK]

^Thanks Rav3n! I never would have expected that kind of compatibility without a big loss in performance. Looks like my best bet. Though it's hard to figure out how any new card performance compares to my 2X 6970 setup, even Tom's charts keep changing their benchmarks year to year. Anyone know if a GTX 970 would be as fast? Or would I have to go GTX 980?

PS Rav3n - I am running a Corsair AX850 in my build as well. Love it, handles blackouts like a pro - best PSU I have ever had and well worth the big $.