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decreased performance in PCI-E?

Se7ven

Se7ven

Se7ven

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Joined
7 Nov 2009
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1,472
I have 2 GTX 480's SLI in my rig and I recently found out that PCI-E slots have different speeds? So depending on what slot your GPU is in, it can effect its performance?

I have not really kept up with technology, so this was the first i had heard of this, here is a pic of the inside of my case;

euewyw.jpg


does anyone know if I am losing performance?

The mainboard is a gigabyte x58a-UD3R

any help appreciated :)
 
With an X58 board you shouldn't have to worry - it should be able to provide 2x PCI-e [email protected].

Some cheaper setups will only provide say 16(+4) lanes total and then that gets shared out as you add extra cards in, etc. but its not an easy subject to cover concisely... aslong as your getting x8 speeds most stuff won't suffer that badly anyhow.
 
GPU-Z will tell you what speed your PCI-E slots are running at
 
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GPU-Z tells me one is running at 16x and one is running at 8x

is it worth my while changing the bottom one (im assuming is the 8x) to the one just below the 16x?
 
you could move it to the other slot but your temps of the first card will suffer. you'll gain 1-2 fps at the cost of higher temps/noise from fan.
 
Record your performance now and then try it in the other slot. Would be interested to see the difference and you can put your mind at ease. :)
 
Apparently the performance drop off with 8x PCI-E is minimal at present. I think it looks better with a decent gap between cards anyway, plus you'd imagine it'd be better for cooling.

Why not bench with the second card in the 16x lane and see what difference you get, if any.

Was looking at some older info about it and it says the 4890 just about saturates the 8x PCI-E 2.0 lane, not sure about newer cards, although you'd imagine they'd be getting there.
 
A 1000w psu is on my shopping list :p

but thanks guys, I dont think I will bother moving it, the heat will get a bit much, the cards can get really hot even with the gaps there
 
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