P8P67 board PCIE disabled question

[cardician]

Hello,

So I recently put together a system with an i7-2600k chip on a P8P67 Deluxe Asus board with two ATI 6970s crossfired together. So far things seem to be running well. I have now purchased (on its way from Newegg) a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional card which runs in a PCIE x1 slot. Today I was browsing around and saw on the Asus website support page that if you crossfire two cards it disables the PCIE x1 slots. As seen here:

http://support.asus.com/faq/detail.aspx?SLanguage=en&p=1&m=P8P67%20DELUXE&s=39&hashedid=FpufhQASBFHNvccl&os=&no=7020B15B-6AEB-11CC-34A7-9C22F0C21159

Just wondering if anyone can confirm that this is going to render my Fatal1ty card inoperable and pointless?

Wish I had seen this sooner but at least I should just be able to return the card to Newegg. Anyone have any thoughts on a good sound card I can use if this is the case? With that board and those cards crossfired together, I don't know that there are really even any more slots open with enough room to put a card in anywhere but the PCIE x1 slot. And if that is truly disabled then I guess I'm stuck with onboard sound.

 

[jaquith]

Welcome to Tom's Forums!

On your MOBO that seems to be correct. You should be able to use the Titanium Fatal1ty in the bottom PCIe x4 slot {black} - kinda waste of a slot but the PCIe x1 can work in a PCIe x8 or x16 slot(s). BTW - the onboard sound 'is' good...

 

[cardician]

Thanks so much for the reply. Wish I had learned of this sooner so I didn't have to deal with making a return, but it's sort of hidden on Asus' website. Thanks for the info on being able to use the other slots. So even though the card has just the tiny little PCIEx1 bottom bits and the PCIEx16 slots are much bigger it will still work? That's good to know. If nothing else I learned something

Unfortunately with my case and where the power supply is plus the size of the ATI cards, I really don't think even the PCIE x 16 3 slot is an option. I'll have to take a closer look. Fortunately though, I'm not really an audiophile so if the onboard sound is decent I should be more than happy. Thanks very much!

 

[jaquith]

No, it's VERY hidden If you do install then please update. IMO use the $ from the Titanium for a nice SSD or something to make the PC faster or more enjoyable.

Good Luck on your build!

 

[cardician]

Best answer selected by cardician.

 

[cardician]

Just thought I'd add this. I went ahead and emailed ASUS and got a response last night. Here is what they say, so there might actually be hope if anyone else is ever interested.

Hello,

If you use 2 graphic cards as CrossFire, the top most PCIE x1 slot should still work properly. And the PCIE bandwidth will be x1 link.

It works out since that is literally the only slot with enough room to actually utilize. I haven't put the card in yet to see if this is true though and I might not bother since the onboard sound does seem very good from what I've heard so far.

One question though if anyone still sees this, where can I look to see how my graphics cards are running? Meaning, where can I verify that they are running in x8/x8 mode and that they don't drop down to x8/x4 or something after I add the sound card to the PCIEx1 slot? I know I saw this somewhere but I couldn't find it last night. If I can find this again then I might go ahead and add the sound card (since I already have it) and see if everything does work. Would that be in GPUZ somewhere?

 

[jaquith]

When I looked at the MOBO I 'did' clearly see the x1 on the top, but after reading ASUS's statement followed by some other forums where the OP claimed it screwed-up both CF & SLI it seemed to 'conclude' steer clear of the x1 PCIe slots.

IF your response is correct, seems logical, then they need to update that FAQ. On most X58 MOBO's the top 'is' the correct place for the Sound Card and it works.

Correct GPU-Z does read the PCIe bandwidth and some BIOS will also verify the link speed, but looking at the manual I didn't see the link speed information.

See Bus Interface, and the GPU selection drop-down:

 

[cardician]

There it is! I thought I had seen it somewhere. Must just have overlooked it when I looked quickly for it this morning. Thanks for pointing it out. I might just give it a try to see if it does work. I'm assuming that if the ASUS rep is wrong, either the sound card will not be recognized or CF will get screwed up somehow or GPUZ will identify the cards no longer being at x8 but something lower?

If I get to it I'll post my results back here in case it might help other out in the future. Thanks again for your help!

 

[jaquith]

IMO - get it up and running FIRST. Test the rig and listen to the sound quality before risking a impulse buy and restocking fee.

If you do install it please let me know.

Good Luck!