MSI P67A-GD55 - PCIe Lane speed in SLi / Xfire

[wildman]

Trying for the last hour to get some info on lane speed of the 2nd PCIe x16 slot and can't find it anywhere. DOes the 2nd Slot run at least at x8 if you are running a crossfire or Sli set up ?

 

[kmufc77]

Form Factor: ATX
CPU Socket: 1155
QPI Speed: N/A
System Bus: N/A
Chipset: Intel P67 Express
Memory Type: DDR3
Memory Channel: Dual
Memory Type (ECC): Non-ECC
Memory Type (R/U): Unbuffered
Memory Speed (Mhz): DDR3 - 1066
DDR3 - 1333
DDR3 - 1600
DDR3 - 2133(OC)
Memory Capacity: 32GB
On Board Graphics:
Graphics Interface: PCI-E 2.0 (x16)
SLI:
Hybrid SLI:
Hybrid Crossfire:
Crossfire:
Water Cooled:
Expansion Slots: 2 x PCI (32 bit)
3 x PCI-E 2.0 x1
2 x PCI-E 2.0 x16
SATA: SATA 3Gb/s
RAID: SATA RAID
Back Panel: 1 x 10/100/1000 (LAN)
1 x Clear CMOS Button
1 x Firewire
1 x Line In
4 x Line Out
1 x Mic In
1 x PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse Combo
1 x SPDIF (Coaxial)
1 x SPDIF (Optical)
8 x USB 2.0
2 x USB 3.0
Internal I/O: 1 x 24pin (V)
1 x 8pin (V)
1 x CD-In
1 x Chassis Intrusion connector
1 x Firewire
1 x FP Audio Header
1 x OC Switch
1 x Power on switch
1 x Reset Button
4 x SATA 3Gb/s
2 x SATA 6Gb/s
1 x Serial (COM) Header
1 x SPDIF-Out Header
1 x TPM Header
1 x USB 2.0 Header
1 x USB 3.0 Header

Both cards should run at 16 x i think.

Download GPUZ and it will tell the speed of the PCIE lanes on each of the cards: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1930/TechPowerUp_GPU-Z_v0.5.1.html

 

[wildman]

thanks for the quick answer. I haven't actually got it yet, but this was a deciding factor as my next upgrade is GFX and I was going to run a pair of 6950's or a pair of 480's. However if the 2nd lane was only runing at x4 I would have looked at another board

 

[kmufc77]

I have the GD65 arriving tomorrow

 

[DennisMenace]

http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P67A-GD55--B3-.html

PCI-Ex16 2
PCI-E Gen Gen2 (1x16, 1x8)

 

[Liquid]

I have the GD65 arriving tomorrow

That's a quality board, mine has been rock solid, slightly clunky uefi implementation in the bios which isn't a big deal. I recommend bios 1.7.

 

[Andrew Moore]

All sandybridge boards sport a total of 16 lanes via the CPUs controller. This means that all boards run 8x and 8x unless they have an NF200 chip which this does not.

Hope this helps.

 

[wildman]

All sandybridge boards sport a total of 16 lanes via the CPUs controller. This means that all boards run 8x and 8x unless they have an NF200 chip which this does not.

Hope this helps.

thanks that helps a lot. I guess that the difference in performance between x8 x8 and x16 x 16 is only going to be a few % and not anything too drastic ?

In the end I went for the GD65 also as it was on special

 

[NathWraith]

As andrew moore said. You can run the 2 cards in x16 and x1 mode or x8 and x8 mode, the latter is preferable as running the slot in x1 mode will bottleneck your card massively! Whereas x8 will not affect performance much at all.

 

[Cr416]

As andrew moore said. You can run the 2 cards in x16 and x1 mode or x8 and x8 mode, the latter is preferable as running the slot in x1 mode will bottleneck your card massively! Whereas x8 will not affect performance much at all.

This. Unless buying a higher end board (something like the ud7 etc) that have a dedicated nf200 chip then you will only ever get x8/x8 when using xfire or sli with p67.

 

[atheos]

If you put it in a PCI-E sound card, would the Graphics card slot run at x16 and the sound card x8?

 

[ScottiB]

All sandybridge boards sport a total of 16 lanes via the CPUs controller. This means that all boards run 8x and 8x unless they have an NF200 chip which this does not.

Hope this helps.

actually not true m8, boards such as the P8P67 and P67A-UD3 only do 4x maximum on the second slot.

the GD55 is 8x/8x so it's properly SLI certified