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Video Card in Second PCI-E 16X Slot

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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Graphics card Expert
Motherboard Expert

^ NO...the P55 chipsets have limited PCIe lanes...So only about 20 PCIe lanes are allotted to the graphic slots...And in that mobo, when you populated 2 cards, it will operate at x8x8 mode, which is better than other cheaper boards that operate at x16x4 mode when 2 cards are populated...
Only in these P55 boards, can operate 2 cards at x16x16 mode...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
Graphics card Master
Motherboard Master

Hello and welcome to the forums :) 
As gkay said P55 supports SLI/CF at dual 8x mode with the exception of those 2 motherboards.
However if you use single card on a P55 board,it will operate at 16x speed.

Maziar said:
Hello and welcome to the forums :) 
As gkay said P55 supports SLI/CF at dual 8x mode with the exception of those 2 motherboards.
However if you use single card on a P55 board,it will operate at 16x speed.


Just to be clear, I only plan to use ONE card, period. My case design is kind of stupid, and the GPU runs into my hard drive bays in the top slot. So, I just want to move it to the 2nd one. If I have to use the top one I still can, but right now I have a rather peculiar rig keeping the 2nd hard drive out of the way.

Thanks again!
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In addition to the question above, if I were ever to go SLI (say 2 x GTX260's), how much does the x8 limitation effect this? I'm new to this so this is probably going to sound stupid... But if the slot works at 1/2 speed, what is the advantage in adding the 2nd card? I can only imagine it's not quite this simple.
Graphics card Authority
Motherboard Expert

Two x8 PCIe 2.0 lanes is totall fine for two GTX260s

The PCIe 2.0 x8 slot only becomes a bottleneck if you're trying to run a 5870 or GTX295 or higher in x8 mode.
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