I knew that my board was at x16 x8 x4 x8 mode when i bought it, but now i was just wondering. When i upgrade in 2012, do you think running two graphic cards at x16 x8 mode will decrease my performance by a lot? Hopefully in 3 years, i can upgrade to a core i9 and get quad SLI gtx 295's for a good price =D. I know the gtx 295 utilizes 16 lanes, but how much slower is quad sli @ x16 x16 than quad sli @ x16 x8 ?
Or maybe by 2012 nvidia will have 400 series already ... hmm
You would be wasting your money on Tri-285's when you can buy dual 5870's and use a GTX 9800 for Physics....
If you already have the cards then yes it is possible.... If you don't have the cards I would suggest you spend your coin on the new Radeon's, you end up spending less, consuming less power and overall a hell lot more performance compared to the 3 285's...
To enable Physics you need to go into the GPU software, Ntune, Riva, etc.... And look for the Physics tab, once located you will have the option to Enable/Disable...
To be honest I would rather use one brand of GPU's only... When you mix both Nvdia and ATI together you are prone to driver conflics among other issues....