SLI on 16/4 pcie

[traumadisaster]

I'm looking for examples of people adding sli to a 16x and a 4x pcie? I have only heard that nvidia doesn't allow it, but surely someone has tried anyway, correct? thanks

 

[iam2thecrowe]

not worth it. even crossfire doesn't run properly on that setup, you will end up with stuttering and low performance.

 

[purple stain]

x4 PCI-Express slots aren't that good but if it's all you've got and you can't upgrade it's better than not adding it.

Tom's did a review on the impact of performance on x4 slots vs x8 and x16 and it's not as bad as you'd think.The average fps loss was around 5-15 FPS depending on the game.

Here's the review.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-scaling-p67-chipset-gaming-performance,2887-4.html

 

[geekapproved]

I'm looking for examples of people adding sli to a 16x and a 4x pcie? I have only heard that nvidia doesn't allow it, but surely someone has tried anyway, correct? thanks

You heard that Nvidia doesn't allow it? More likely you heard that you won't get maxium performance.

 

[traumadisaster]

I read a post that said when I place the second card into the 4x pcie (with a card in the 16x pcie) that the nvidia control panel does not recognize the option to turn on sli.

Thanks for you ideas, I'm curious if anyone has actual experience doing it? Thanks for your help.

 

[nforce4max]

Well I have owned and still own my fair share of sli rigs and 16x4 is not the way to do it period and you want equal bandwidth going to both cards or performance in scaling from one card to two is going to be very poor. Worse case it either doesn't work at all or is even a downgrade from where you were before or the gains are so small that they are hardly notice either way you won't be happy with this. Either swap the board out or stay with a single card.

 

[traumadisaster]

I can pick up z68 for $80, but no sli. Or spend double that to get 16/8 pcie. What is next mobo after z68 that that is coming, any idea what features it will have?

 

[nforce4max]

Oh another thing board makers these days got no sense at all to instead put 16x4 they should have done 8x8x4 and give people the chance of a proper sli/crossfire board for at least a two way setup with the option of such things as a raid controller or pci-e ssd but nope 16x4. The board is ok for that config but what ever you get buy something that is even worth your time. Any thing less don't bother.

 

[purple stain]

Sounds like marketing to me.

 

[nforce4max]

Sounds like marketing to me.

Cha-Ching

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Oh another thing board makers these days got no sense at all to instead put 16x4 they should have done 8x8x4 and give people the chance of a proper sli/crossfire board for at least a two way setup with the option of such things as a raid controller or pci-e ssd but nope 16x4. The board is ok for that config but what ever you get buy something that is even worth your time. Any thing less don't bother.

many of the gigabyte z68 boards have an 8/8 or 8/8/4 setup.

 

[traumadisaster]

Best answer selected by Traumadisaster.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey