PCI-E CF x4 or x8 that much of a difference?

[imanoob93]

Hey guys,

I am planning to get a new mobo and I want it to be CF. I may not CF for a while, but I like knowing I have the option if I want to down the road. I've been looking on newegg quite a lot and I've found a couple in my price range. I also saw that they have CF mobos with the 2nd PCI-E that are either x4 or x8. I've heard that if you use x4, it takes away about 5% of the performance of the 2nd video card. Is that true? Is there much of a difference between x4 and x8? I was just wondering because i'd really rather use an x4 because an x8 board is a little more $$.


P.S. Would it be dumb to purchase an Open Box motherboard? Because I like the price on those!


Thanks

 

[g00fysmiley]

open box usuaully just emans that somebody returned it, or was the one they used to photograph. in rare cases it could mean that they are refurbished from the manifacturer and sold at a discount.

as far as the hit to performance yes there is a small performance difference 4x-8x really depends on the graphics cards as to if they'd even saturate that. it you wanna go 5870 yes there will probably be a drop of a small percentage, but if its say a 5770 or lower probably not signifigant, you'll get a small dip due to crossfire scaling not being 100%

 

[acer0169]

As far as I know, the x8 has double the bandwidth of the x4. This doesn't mean double the speed as todays cards don't use that much more bandwidth than x4, but in the future it would be a big drop.