Video Card Specifications and PCIe saturation Information

[narffdaddy]

This may be a simple question, but I've been searching for hours and I can't find a definitive answer.

When looking at video card specs, what will tell me about whether or not the card can saturate a given number of PCIe 2.0 lanes? I know that PCIe gets 500MB/sec per lane, but I'm looking for something in the video card specs that will tell me how much throughput the card has. This will be helpful in selecting a motherboard with an adequate PCIe config for a machine I'm building.

I'm trying to find a video card that can actually benefit from a 2.0 x16 slot so i can determine the importance of the number of full speed x16 slots that I need. I'm not worried so much about SLI/CF right now, but I may want to add a second video card in the future. I just have to be mindful of the PCIe config since my primary concern is my PCIe SSDs. I need at least three x4 slots for those.

Thanks!

 

[k1114]

Your not going to find pcie saturation anywhere as there is no way to get a real reading of it. The biggest bottleneck is going to be cpu before the pcie slot. No matter the card, if it be low end or high end, all will benefit with more bandwidth. But even high end cards like the 6950 and 570 only lose 2-5% from x16 to x8, and 10-20% from x16 to x4. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-scaling-p67-chipset-gaming-performance,2887-9.html This is a really good 3 part article examining the cards, the slot and the chipset.

 

[narffdaddy]

That's a fantastic article, thanks! I'm not sure how I missed it...