Please Explain Video Card Speed on Motherboard....

[mattd860]

Last year I bought a motherboard that runs one pci-e video card at 16x speed or two cards at 8x speed each. What exactly does this mean in terms of video card performance?

Specifically - does this mean that two video cards running at 8x will only perform the same as one card running at 16x???

Thanks.

 

[Rustyy117]

No, Almost all graphics cards will not saturate an x8 PCI-E lane

So say for example 2 x HD6850's in Crossfire in 8x/8x configuration will perform almost identically to the same cards in 16x/16x configuration.

The only cards that would use up a 8x lane would be extremely high end cards like a GTX480 or HD5970

 

[mattd860]

Ok thanks. I just wanted to make sure running two cards on my board will definitely be better than running one card. I understand now that running two cards at 8x speed each isn't as fast as running both at 16x speed but still better than running one card at 16x speed.

 

[mattd860]

Best answer selected by mattd860.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey