Important question i need answering

stickroad · 5 Jan 2007 at 15:54

I know some, most motherboards have 2 x pci-express slots one of them runs at 16x end of story but the other one dosent it will either run at 8x, 4x even 2x.

So just say you had one PCI-Express slot running at 16x and the other one running at 8x and you got say 2 7900 cards to set up in a sli setup, you wouldn't get a full sli setup is that correct?

Thank you

m3lv1n · 5 Jan 2007 at 15:56

Generally you would flick a switch or jumper on the board so that you have 2 x PCI-E x8 instead.

stickroad · 5 Jan 2007 at 16:00

so is that the same as just one x16 graphics card, putting it in the x16 pci express slot.

In other words are you gaining anything of having a sli setup if your only one of your pci express slots is running at 16x?

m3lv1n · 5 Jan 2007 at 16:17

Two cards in SLI on PCI-E x8 is faster than a single card on PCI-E x16

I don't believe there are any cards that can saturate an x16 bus yet.

I think the 8800 series may be able to saturate a x8 bus but I'm not sure, Nvidia recommends dual x16 for 8800 in sli.

I'm quite sure someone else will know though.

Jumping · 5 Jan 2007 at 16:26

But is been proved that the 650i sli boards which uses 8x pci-e seems to work fine with the 8800gtx cards and it doesnt seem to impact performance much either.