PCIe8x mod to fit 16x

[damenshon]

I remeber tomshardware did something resembling this. they took a video card and taped some of the pins creating an 8x type card to test the effect of slowing down the bus. anyone know the link?

Im trying to make my PCIe8x slot fit and operate a 16x video card. so far i got the fitting part but it wont turn on. (the video card doesnt get power). any ideas?

 

[nottheking]

If memory serves me correctly, you can't just do that. You have to find a way to disable those extra 8 lanes, so that the video card never even tries to use them; since all of them conduct electrical current, not just data, if it actually has the lanes, and they're not somehow disabled, either through hardware or BIOS or what have you, it won't work.

 

[darkstar782]

Thats not true as I know there is a Gigabyte mobo that has the end bits of the PCI-Ex1 slots open and can run x16 graphics cards in them..... I'll try to find a link.

Edit: Here

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I remeber tomshardware did something resembling this. they took a video card and taped some of the pins creating an 8x type card to test the effect of slowing down the bus. anyone know the link?

I think you're confusing THG with another site. I remember someone taking a GF6800 and moding it to try and get it to work in a 1X (or 4X) slot, but all he managed to do was destroy his card.

 

[mpjesse]

Ummm... AFAIK there's no such thing as an 8x form factor. It goes 1x, 4x, and 16x (or 16x with 8x lanes).

Someone correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[darkstar782]

I think you're confusing THG with another site. I remember someone taking a GF6800 and moding it to try and get it to work in a 1X (or 4X) slot, but all he managed to do was destroy his card.

Hes not Link

Is this what you are trying to do to your card?

 

[mpjesse]

I think you're confusing THG with another site. I remember someone taking a GF6800 and moding it to try and get it to work in a 1X (or 4X) slot, but all he managed to do was destroy his card.

Hes not Link

Is this what you are trying to do to your card?

That's a really interesting article. Frankly I'm surprised that there's essentially no performance difference between 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x. And the difference between 1x and 16x is small. Of course, these are older cards and I'm sure a 7800GTX or x1800/x1900 would show a biggere difference, but the results are interesting nonetheless.

 

[quantumsheep]

I think you're confusing THG with another site. I remember someone taking a GF6800 and moding it to try and get it to work in a 1X (or 4X) slot, but all he managed to do was destroy his card.

Hes not Link

Is this what you are trying to do to your card?

That's a really interesting article. Frankly I'm surprised that there's essentially no performance difference between 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x. And the difference between 1x and 16x is small. Of course, these are older cards and I'm sure a 7800GTX or x1800/x1900 would show a biggere difference, but the results are interesting nonetheless.

Aye, it sorta backs up what i have been saying for the last year that AGP is NOT redundant. Any card that can run in PCI-E would be able to run perfectly fine in AGP. Just look at the 7800GS+, it's a 7900gt GPU on a 7800GS PCB.

Long live AGP!

 

[mpjesse]

I agree. Only thing is AGP can't do SLI or crossfire. ;-)

I think AGP went the way of the dodo a little too quickly. But oh well.

 

[Crashman]

Ummm... AFAIK there's no such thing as an 8x form factor. It goes 1x, 4x, and 16x (or 16x with 8x lanes).

Someone correct me if i'm wrong.

You're wrong, x8 is supposed to replace PCI-X with PCI-Express and is used primarily for enterprise-class RAID cards at this time.

 

[quantumsheep]

Ummm... AFAIK there's no such thing as an 8x form factor. It goes 1x, 4x, and 16x (or 16x with 8x lanes).

Someone correct me if i'm wrong.

You're wrong, x8 is supposed to replace PCI-X with PCI-Express and is used primarily for enterprise-class RAID cards at this time.

I thought PCI-X and PCI-E were the same thing?

 

[Crashman]

How do you know it's not working, black screen at boot? That doesn't mean anything more than BIOS is trying to use some other slot for graphics at boot. You might not be able to make it show BIOS.

What you'll probably have to do is use another graphics device to boot and get into Windows, where you can load the driver for the card that "isn't working" and enable the display through display manager.

x8 works fine with x16 cards, so if you're unable to use the card in windows, you probably damaged the slot.

 

[Crashman]

d00d, read the motherboard guide from a week ago.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Ah ok, don't remember seeing that on the .com site, is it just the UK site?

I check the French one from time to time, but never dreamed there'd be a UK one as well as .com

Interesting, I'll take a gander at it, maybe I saw it and forgot it, have to read more though, and not much time at work (easier to type and do other things than read).

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I agree. Only thing is AGP can't do SLI or crossfire. ;-)

And hypermemory, and physics, change lanes & power consumption on the fly, and finally get ride of unstable fastwrites. 8)

I think AGP went the way of the dodo a little too quickly. But oh well.

Nah, if PCIe came out at the 2X AGP mark, we'd be glad to be rid of it by now.

There is AGP 16X (and 12X internally in nV's HSI bridge), but really why postpone it? I think if prescott had been a better launch (like Conroe) we'd be having less of those discussions, and more people would've moved on sooner.

I don't care what people use, but I'm glad there's the option of PCIe, and now that I'm there, I'm not looking back, because like I mentioned there's more than just bandwidth advantages, and personally I'd wish they'd start moving audio and video capture cards to there to get rid of latency (can't believe it but there's some audio problem in Oblivion due to PCI latency).

 

[gon1127]

Ummm... AFAIK there's no such thing as an 8x form factor. It goes 1x, 4x, and 16x (or 16x with 8x lanes).

Someone correct me if i'm wrong.

You're wrong, x8 is supposed to replace PCI-X with PCI-Express and is used primarily for enterprise-class RAID cards at this time.

I thought PCI-X and PCI-E were the same thing?

PCI-X is just a name for PCI-Extended, a revisions to the original PCI standard, i believe. these cards are for server/workstation boards. i've got a Tyan board that has a couple of PCI-X slots. i used one for an extra IDE controller card. although, i should have used for a RAID card instead. it supposed to give these cards more bandwidth on the PCI bus.
here's a wikipedia link to describe its use.

 

[darkstar782]

I think you're confusing THG with another site. I remember someone taking a GF6800 and moding it to try and get it to work in a 1X (or 4X) slot, but all he managed to do was destroy his card.

Hes not Link

Is this what you are trying to do to your card?

That's a really interesting article. Frankly I'm surprised that there's essentially no performance difference between 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x. And the difference between 1x and 16x is small. Of course, these are older cards and I'm sure a 7800GTX or x1800/x1900 would show a biggere difference, but the results are interesting nonetheless.

Aye, it sorta backs up what i have been saying for the last year that AGP is NOT redundant. Any card that can run in PCI-E would be able to run perfectly fine in AGP. Just look at the 7800GS+, it's a 7900gt GPU on a 7800GS PCB.

Long live AGP!

I have a 7900GT at on PCI-Ex4 atm, with 1gig of DDR-667 and a Pentium D 805 at stock speeds on a crappy ASrock 775Dual-880pro and it scores 4416 in 3Dmark06 which is the best 3dmark06 score on ORB with a stock Pentium D805 and a 7900GT, even compared to PCI-E 16 boards, and thats at half the speed of AGPx8, So I'd agree AGP is fine!

 

[mpjesse]

Ummm... AFAIK there's no such thing as an 8x form factor. It goes 1x, 4x, and 16x (or 16x with 8x lanes).

Someone correct me if i'm wrong.

You're wrong, x8 is supposed to replace PCI-X with PCI-Express and is used primarily for enterprise-class RAID cards at this time.

Yeah but aren't the cards in 16x form factor? Ah... nope. I just found an 8x form factor card.

http://www.8anet.com/merchant.ihtml?pid=195&lastcatid=31&step=4

It still needs to go into a 16x slot though (to get full bandwidth). I know of no motherboard w/ an 8x slot.

 

[Crashman]

There are lots of server/workstation boards with x8 slots, here's the first one I found on a long list:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131552

 

[darkstar782]

Doesnt the spec call for x32 slots and cards too? those would be massive

 

[Crashman]

x32 would be perfect for adding riser cards to a modified NLX standard

 

[mpjesse]

There are lots of server/workstation boards with x8 slots, here's the first one I found on a long list:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131552

i'll be damned. i stand corrected. ;-)

 

[mpjesse]

yeah, from what i understand 32x is sort of being worked on. PCI-E apparently has the capability of 32x, but no one has put out a production motherboard w/ a 32x slot. But in theory, it shouldn't be a problem because the nForce4 Professional chipset already uses 32 lanes (split in 2 for full x16 slots).

I'm not sure how the form factor for 32x would work though. Seems like it would be awfully long.

I guess they could stack 2 on top of each other... sorta like what they do w/ SLI.

 

[mpjesse]

http://www.alliancesystems.com/Documents/PCI_Express_Whitepaper.pdf

here's a PCI-E whitepaper that mentions x32.

16GB/s.

F*UCK. I never thought I'd see the day...

(they also mention something called G3 x32. it has a theoretical bandwidth limit of 60GB/s)