8800 GTS and 650 SLi

[Wilco]

On your descriptions of 8800 GTS cards it says the board must support Dual x16 slots in order to SLI the cards. The specs for the 650i "SLi" chipset state only 2x x8 slots. Does this mean NVidias Newest "2nd rate" "SLi" (lots of inverted comma's here ) chipset will not actually SLi with NVidias newest "2nd rate" graphics cards?

 

[SteveOBHave]

Get the 680i instead then, it's not that complicated.

 

[HeX]

8800's work fine in the i650 and its no slower than the i680, so just ignore the nvidia marketing hype and buy with confidence.

Have a look at the Anandtech P5N-E review they run SLi 8800's and compair them to the i680 and there is less than 0.1% difference between the two and in some cases the i650 is faster.

 

[Wilco]

Its not difficult, but it is doubling the price of a motherboard, for features I won't really need.

I've actually read that anandtech review before, probably should have clicked (just got scared reading the description today ).

Thanks

 

[drak3]

If you game at 1280x1024 for example you wont notice ANY difference. However as the resolutions go up you might get bottleneck up to 30% in SOME games.

 

[Wilco]

I plan on gaming in 1900x1200 (dell 24" ), but I'm not going to buy 2 cards straight away, it's just if I want to upgrade in the future.

 

[lay-z-boy]

8800 range will work in x16 slots that are x8 electrical.

the x16 electrical is a load of bs.

 

[EvilGrin]

The asus P5N-E is x16 when running only one graphics card anyway. One 8800 GTS is more than enough for 1280x1024 for the forseeable future!

 

[mikka84]

Pretty sure that it runs 2*16x
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2894&p=5
look at company of heroes and hl2 benchmarks
p5n-e s actually edging a bit forwards with sli compared to 680i board

 

[lay-z-boy]

Pretty sure that it runs 2*16x
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2894&p=5
look at company of heroes and hl2 benchmarks
p5n-e s actually edging a bit forwards with sli compared to 680i board

Well your wrong.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/nforce_600i_tech_specs.html

Yes
2 x8

Straight from the horses mouth.

 

[mikka84]

hmm, doesnt seem like much difference from 2*16x then, maybe driver issue? im guessing here though, sum people say its 16X sum say its 8X, benchmarks are saying its close to 680i asus which runs those g80s in x16.

 

[mikka84]

so what does "electrical 8x" mean then?? (question to lay-z-boy, u seem to be knowledgeable on this subject)

 

[fornowagain]

PCIe is serial and bidirectional. x8 means the PCIe bus runs at 8 times the 2.5Gbps bandwidth per direction per lane. After overheads that gives 2GB/s half-duplex or twice that for the full bandwidth. Graphics cards pretty much use data in one direction.

http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_PCI_Express.html

 

[Cartho]

The asus P5N-E is x16 when running only one graphics card anyway. One 8800 GTS is more than enough for 1280x1024 for the forseeable future!

exactly, an 8800 GTS will massacre any game you throw at it at 1280 X 1024, on high settings, and still say: "is that all you've got?"

heck an 8800 GTS will be VERY good even fro Crysis.....

 

[lay-z-boy]

so what does "electrical 8x" mean then?? (question to lay-z-boy, u seem to be knowledgeable on this subject)

Say you have a physical pci-e x16 slot, (the longest one in this image)

You can have different electrical speeds inside the physical x16 slot.

They can range from x1 to x16 as of now.

An electrical x8 slot (obviously) has half the bandwidth of an electrical x16 slot but the physical slot can be the same for both.

Hope, that explains it