PCIE 3.0 on Haswell 20 lanes only need help! 2 NVME PCIE Drives

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zazzn

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Hi all,

I currently have 2 400 GB P3700 NVME drives from Intel that I want to use and trying to find the right upgrade path.

Each card specifys PCIE 3.0 4x for the requirements. All the SLI mobo's out there will drop the first PCIE slot to 8x if something is installed in the second PCIE and the 3rd will run at 4x anyways.

Will 8x hamper my performance on a 1070 GTX? Can an NVME drive even be installed in th is slot?

I was looking at the GA-Z170X-Ultra Gaming or the EVGA FTW.

This PCIE stuff has me very confused.
 
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Too add to Techgeek's post, here is an example motherboard:

GA-Z170X-Gaming G1
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5478#sp

If you look at the PCI-E lane layout, you will notice that it has two lanes running at X16 each (IE both runs at x16 lanes, regardless of whether either or both are populated), something that is typically not available on other Z170 motherboards because Skylake CPUs only has 16 PCI-E lanes.

However the two motherboards differ greatly in price:

https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-LGA1151-Intel-Motherboards-GA-Z170X-GAMING/dp/B017KE82IU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468388129&sr=8-1&keywords=GA-Z170X-Ultra+Gaming...
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techgeek

techgeek

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I don't think that it'll affect your performance on the 1070 at all. Most Haswell systems run X8X8 in SLI due to the limited PCI-E lanes and it doesn't affect it in that case, so a single card at X8 should be fine. I know there were a few sites that experimented with lowering PCI-E lanes to see how it affected performance and it had negligible performance reduction right down to X4. I remember the one I read (forget where) they used electrical tape over the lanes to reduce the number of lanes available to the card.

As for whether the drive will work in a X16 (electrically X8) slot, the answer is yes it will work. The shorter card edge will only utilize 4 lanes the remainder will go unused.

There are a few Haswell motherboards that have a PLX chip which is essentially a PCI-E switch or bridge. It will increase the number of PCI-E lanes. This is an option if you really don't want to lose a X16 connection with your graphics card. Just be warned though, these motherboards are quite a bit more expensive.
 
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chenw

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Oct 25, 2014
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Too add to Techgeek's post, here is an example motherboard:

GA-Z170X-Gaming G1
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5478#sp

If you look at the PCI-E lane layout, you will notice that it has two lanes running at X16 each (IE both runs at x16 lanes, regardless of whether either or both are populated), something that is typically not available on other Z170 motherboards because Skylake CPUs only has 16 PCI-E lanes.

However the two motherboards differ greatly in price:

https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-LGA1151-Intel-Motherboards-GA-Z170X-GAMING/dp/B017KE82IU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468388129&sr=8-1&keywords=GA-Z170X-Ultra+Gaming
https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Intel-Motherboard-GA-Z170X-Gaming-G1/dp/B013E37GCO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468388115&sr=8-1&keywords=GA-Z170X-Gaming+G1

According to Amazon's current prices, nearly 3x as much as non-PLX'ed motherboards.
 
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zazzn

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Hi all, thank you for all the quick help and replies! Another question I have is I'm running a SandyBridge p8p67 2500k, and I really actually don't want to upgrade to Haswell, because I don't see a huge benefit for me for what I'm doing. Sure I'll get some extra cycles from the more efficient core, but I'm running at 4.8GHZ on my 2500k which and running a 780GTX right now and it's doing everything I need. I have one spare PCI-E slot but when I put the NVME drive in there, the machine will not post. Note, I'm not even trying to boot form it, just trying to get it to post.

I was going to follow this guide http://www.win-raid.com/t871f16-Guide-How-to-get-full-NVMe-support-for-Intel-Chipset-systems-from-Series-up.html to make it work on my machine, but think I have bigger issues like the mobo wont accept the NVME card. Any insight in to this? Reading up on this I think my 780gtx on PCIE 2.0 @ 8x will only be hurt by about 10% if I run one of the NVME.
 
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maxalge

maxalge

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without patching the bios you cannot boot from nvme at all, ever



i am not sure it is possible at all on your older mobo




also the difference between x16 and x8 is 1 - 2 % only loss
 
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zazzn

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Ah, yes sorry I meant skylake.. Not haswell. ;) @maxalge Also I'm not trying to boot NVME right now, I'm just trying to get the machine to post so I can get to the BIOS and see the drive. I can use it as a secondary drive to my 840Pro which is the main drive right now. When I insert the NVME drive the machine will not even post and I have no video on the screen at all. I think modding the BIOS just adds a new EFI loader, which I understand what they are doing. In my case I don't even see anything when I power on the machine. Also I have the latest 3602 bios
 
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