Please help with understanding the PCI-E speeds when sli'ng gpu's.

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kanewolf
It all depends on your motherboard. Your CPU/motherboard have a finite amount of PCI-e lanes. The speed of those lanes varies based on the generation of PCI-e (gen 1, 2, 3). A motherboard might have 20 PCI-e gen 3 lanes. If you have a single graphics card then 16 of them are available to that card. When you add a second card, the motherboard splits the PCI-e lanes between the two slots and each card gets 8 lanes. With gen-3 that is still plenty of bandwidth. The SLI bridge provides additional dedicated connectivity between the two cards.

There are lots of articles which discuss the amount of PCI-e bandwidth REQUIRED by graphics cards. A x8 gen-2 or better will have minimal impact on performance.
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kanewolf

kanewolf

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It all depends on your motherboard. Your CPU/motherboard have a finite amount of PCI-e lanes. The speed of those lanes varies based on the generation of PCI-e (gen 1, 2, 3). A motherboard might have 20 PCI-e gen 3 lanes. If you have a single graphics card then 16 of them are available to that card. When you add a second card, the motherboard splits the PCI-e lanes between the two slots and each card gets 8 lanes. With gen-3 that is still plenty of bandwidth. The SLI bridge provides additional dedicated connectivity between the two cards.

There are lots of articles which discuss the amount of PCI-e bandwidth REQUIRED by graphics cards. A x8 gen-2 or better will have minimal impact on performance.
 
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