SLI 16x or 32x

[Kelend]

Long time lurker, first time poster here. I have a fairly straight forward question:

Whats the real life advantage of SLI 16x (two 8x) or 32x (two 16x)

I know more lanes equals more bandwith for each card, but at the current lvl how much performance are you going to see. Also, in theory, would this cause some bottlenecking with dual DX10 cards once they are released, and if so, how much, noticeable? unbearable? etc.

Thanks!

 

[grimmysnr]

As of right now, none. Apparently there are reviews that only show a few fps difference between the two. Its not a hardware issue its more of an issue that there are not any software based items that need that much bandwidth. I purchased my mobo with the option of 16x simply for upgradibility purposes in hopes that i wont have to mess with anything else comes vista time. I personally dont plan on messing with vista as long as i can becuz i remember when XP first came out, finding anything to run on it was a nightmare.

So i would say if you want peice of mind for tomorrows software then sure spend a little extra but if you are crunchin numbers and livin in todays standards then 8x wont hurt you one bit.

 

[prozac26]

You won't notice a difference. Even with next-gen card, the difference might be close to zero.

 

[rwaritsdario]

32x can run quad SLI, 16x cant.
As of for performance, none. The 32x only runs on 590 chipset and the 16x on 570 (just talking nvida of course).

 

[NaDa]

Thats why they put really expensive and fast ram on those cards so they dont relay on the pci express bandwith so much.
The difference would be notable on the TurboCache and similar crap series of video cards that utilize system ram for their own.
But you aint gonna buy a sli32X board just to plug 2x 6200TC are you ??