There any true 16x16x16 boards?
- Thread starter Gerard
- Start date
Do the EVGA Classified or ASUS P6T7 WS fall into this category?
With 7 PCI-e slots, surely 3 of them run at 16x 16x 16x??
With 7 PCI-e slots, surely 3 of them run at 16x 16x 16x??
This does. I dont know about the other.
+1Bloody hell, quite the prices on those 2.
Over £300 for a board?!
The Asus will run x16 x16 x16 but that EVGA Classified won't. Take a careful look at the model number: 141-BL-E760-A1
EVGA have 4 models of classified mobo:
141-BL-E759 - Has an NF200 chipset along side the X58 one allowing for the same 48 pci-e 2.0 lanes that the Asus P6T7 WS does. Only very few were made as it was a limited edition board, you will not be able to get these any more.
141-BL-E760 - Is still a great board but works just the same as all X58 boards with 36 pci-e 2.0 lanes. You will not be able to run x16 x16 x16 with it. This is the one OCUK stock.
141-BL-E761 - The same as the E760 but with an external control module.
170-BL-E762 - Has 2 NF200 chips and an X58 chipset allowing for x16 x16 x16 x16 GPU configuration. The product costs a premium price and has an unusual form factor ot XL-ATX, check your case is big enough as the vast majority are too small!
Surely this is a bit of a con though? The cards might be given a 16way link, but the nf200 is a PCIe switch, which means that the PCIe cards end up sharing lanes as far as system memory access is concerned, as opposed to having dedicated lanes.
There have been no decent reviews of the board yet so I don't really know if what you're saying would actually translate into a performance hit or not. On paper it does sound like a bit of a bodge I'll admit.
If your using the 3 lanes for SLI mode then the NF200 switch isn't a performance problem - infact due to its ability to shortcut transactions between the cards sharing the switch it can theoretically increase SLI performance.
In SLI mode the same data (textures, etc.) is used on all the cards so the NF200 can in these cases upload the data to any cards connected to it at the same time in SLI mode again negating some of the potential performance loss - the other commands are generally not a big enough workload to present the switch any problems.
If your planning on using 3x x16 lanes for non SLI useage then there will be some performance loss tho it shouldn't be horrendous.
In SLI mode the same data (textures, etc.) is used on all the cards so the NF200 can in these cases upload the data to any cards connected to it at the same time in SLI mode again negating some of the potential performance loss - the other commands are generally not a big enough workload to present the switch any problems.
If your planning on using 3x x16 lanes for non SLI useage then there will be some performance loss tho it shouldn't be horrendous.