• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Would I notice a speed drop using both my x16 slots?

Phil2008

Phil2008

Phil2008

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2004
Posts
8,758
Hey guys, Im thinking about buying a PCIE SSD card, but I would have to fit it in my other PCIE x16 slot because my small PCIE slots are only x2. So would I notice a drop in graphic card speed, as the x16 slots drop to x8 if both slots are used?
 
Thanks guys for putting my mind at rest, as I have never used both pcix 16 slots before because of this reason and I thought the gfx card would suffer. So Im guessing the cpu would bottle neck the gfx card first, before the motherboard does?
 
Yes, the CPU would be more of a concern if being run underclocked/always kept at stock and would, therefore, be more of 'weakness' than the motherboard. If the CPU was running at stock then it might hold your GPU back somewhat in certain instances - but still, even then I would think that for the most part, you would receive decent performance but just not as much GPU usage across the spectrum. However, with a healthy overclock like you have then I wouldn't worry. I can't remember exactly what percentage of performance would be lost by having one lane working at X8 vs X16, but I know it was very low - even on PCI-E Gen 1.0 IIRC.
 
arc@css;30492267 said:
I can't remember exactly what percentage of performance would be lost by having one lane working at X8 vs X16, but I know it was very low - even on PCI-E Gen 1.0 IIRC.
Click to expand...

Ah cool, Im PCIE 2.0 speeds. I should upgrade my cpu to ivy bridge to get 3.0 speeds.

Just looking now at the PCIE SSD cards and they are quite a bit more expensive then SATA SSD drives:mad:
 
Unless you're running a Titan X Pascal, very unlikely you'll see a noticeable difference really with x8 PCIe 3.0. With PCIe 2.0 I'm less sure but I reckon it will still be fine.

Puppetmaster is correct, if you have a 6 series motherboard (e.g. z68), it needs to specifically support PCIe 3.0, most only support 2.0
 
Apparently if I change the cpu to ivy bridge, the motherboard will change to 3.0 speeds....

GIGABYTE Announces 6 Series Ready to Support Native PCIe Gen. 3
Future Proof Your Platform for Next Generation Intel 22nm CPUs

I have just looked at some PCIE 2.0 vs 3.0 and the different is quite large with 8x....... From that chart it looks like if I change my cpu to get PCIE 3.0 speeds, the PCIE 8X speeds will be more or less the same as PCIE 2.0 16x speeds... Ummmmm

Image2.jpg
 
ibpalle;30495136 said:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/pci-express-3-0-vs-2-0-gaming-performance-gain/

Very little difference.
Click to expand...

Except the very link you posted does show a reasonable difference? As many of the gaming benchmarks took a noticeable drop than didn't. Remember the OP is talking about dropping to PCIe 2.0 8x, so inline with the PCIe 3.0 4x results in those benchmarks. Some moderate drops there for sure.

I'm in the same boat on a 2600k. PCIe 2.0 only so if I want a PCIe SSD it means dropping my card to 8x but the possible ~10% performance loss on the GPU in some games isn't worth it. You'll notice the loss of GPU performance far more than the speed difference on the SDD vs a fast SATA model.

I think for anyone on PCIe 3.0 there are no issues here and 8x is perfectly fine for a GPU, but there is evidence to show that the picture is different once you look at PCIe 2.0 and high end GPUs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom