How to PCI lanes/speed affect sli?

[guzami77]

Specifically, im looking at this board
ASUS Rampage III Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0
I plan on running two or three cards in SLI, the configurations listed are "support x16; x16/x16; x16/x8/x8 and x8/x8/x8/x8 configurations"

Question one- in tri-sli mode x16/x8/x8 is used.. does that mean I wont get as much performance from the two cards on x8 lanes?
Question two- if a large card(revodrive) is in the PCI-E x4 slot, I may not be able to place a graphics card in the second PCI-E x16 slot. Will the third slot run at x16 if only two graphics cards are installed?
Question three- If running a 580 in slot 1, 580 in slot 3, and a dedicated card for physix in slot 4..
A) this would work right?
B) what are recommendations for physix cards? is there such thing as overkill, do they need to be 400 or 500 series cards?

Question four- for these purposes, would I do better with a gigabyte or evga classified 1366 mobo?

fyi..

1366 because 980x cpu
im not considering amd card because in gaming at native 2560 x 1440 resolution

 

[tecmo34]

1) Yes... but you are talking about 2% to 3% and would not be noticed in a Tri-SLI.

2) Yes... It will run at x16,x16 from what I can tell.

3a) Not worth it with two GTX 580's

3b) See 3a)

4) I would go with your choice since you are looking at a PCIe x4 SSD and the EVGA X58 Classified 3 doesn't have that slot (don't recommend Gigabyte outside of the GA-X58A-UD9).

 

[guzami77]

Best answer selected by guzami77.

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been closed by Maziar