What does this mean?

G

ghn22

New Member
I dont understand why you can select two PCIe x16 2.0 expansion slots and yo uget this highly recommended board then it read....

"""""PCI Express 2.0 x16 - 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (red) support single at x16 or dual at x8 mode""""""
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Does this mean if I get 2 video cars they wont run at x16 like it should? then why even have 2 slots and pay extra money? whats the point?

any help would be great. Thanks in advance.

ASUS Maximus III Formula LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131482

Supported CPU
CPU Socket Type LGA 1156
CPU Type Core i7 (LGA1156)/i5 (LGA1156)
Expansion Slots
PCI Express x16 1 x PCIe x16 (white) supports at x4 mode
PCI Express x1 2
PCI Slots 2
 
Something is wrong with the typed specs there. The board has three x16 slots. I suspect the two red ones run at full 16x and that's where you'd do the SLI. The white one runs at 4x and is probably more for Physx.
 
The_Other_One said:
Something is wrong with the typed specs there. The board has three x16 slots. I suspect the two red ones run at full 16x and that's where you'd do the SLI. The white one runs at 4x and is probably more for Physx.
Click to expand...

what he means is why does it run at x8 when there are 2 cards.

People are under the assumption that using a single card in PCI-E x16 will give the same speeds as 2 card in PCI-e at x8 because half 16 is 8, so each card is giving half the speed of an x16, collectively giving the same speed as a single x16 card. This however isn't true

No new video card will be affected by the "slower" speed, at x8 you will be losing maybe 1 or 2 % performance on each card over the speeds of x16 speed, still making it just about twice as fast as having a single card

Other_One you are right about the white one though, it supports cards of x16 format, like your video cards, but does only run at x4, so is designed for a physx card
 
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Your FSB speed is what's affecting this I think. But still, dual SLI cards should give you quite a bit more performance than 1 the x8 and x16 rating doesn't directly translate into the performance of your video card.
 
Aastii said:
what he means is why does it run at x8 when there are 2 cards.

People are under the assumption that using a single card in PCI-E x16 will give the same speeds as 2 card in PCI-e at x8 because half 16 is 8, so each card is giving half the speed of an x16, collectively giving the same speed as a single x16 card. This however isn't true

No new video card will be affected by the "slower" speed, at x8 you will be losing maybe 1 or 2 % performance on each card over the speeds of x16 speed, still making it just about twice as fast as having a single card

Other_One you are right about the white one though, it supports cards of x16 format, like your video cards, but does only run at x4, so is designed for a physx card
Click to expand...



First off, thanks for the fast response. I'm just making sure that I got this right. If I get this board "ASUS Maximus III Formula LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard" and apply 2 SAPPHIRE 100282SR Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16

"http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102857"

it will run both cards at PCIe x16 2.0 (the 2 red slots) and I should have 2gigs of video memory?

thanks again
 
Both cards will run at x8 speed, becuase of the P55 chipset. only X58 chipset can run x6/x16. If you raise the PCI-E clock (asus boards can do this) up to 110mhz from 100mhz you regain that 1-2% performance drop.

But having 2 cards will negate the effect of running at x8 speed in the first place, because two cards running at x8 beats 1 card running at x16.
 
ghn22 said:
First off, thanks for the fast response. I'm just making sure that I got this right. If I get this board "ASUS Maximus III Formula LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard" and apply 2 SAPPHIRE 100282SR Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16

"http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102857"

it will run both cards at PCIe x16 2.0 (the 2 red slots) and I should have 2gigs of video memory?

thanks again
Click to expand...

It will run both cards fine at x8 speeds, not x16, however the performance loss from a single card is negligable, the performance gain combined is massive.

You will have 2GB video memory yes
 
linkin93 said:
Both cards will run at x8 speed, becuase of the P55 chipset. only X58 chipset can run x6/x16. If you raise the PCI-E clock (asus boards can do this) up to 110mhz from 100mhz you regain that 1-2% performance drop.

But having 2 cards will negate the effect of running at x8 speed in the first place, because two cards running at x8 beats 1 card running at x16.
Click to expand...

Do you mean "16/16" ?
 
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