Pcie x1, x4, x8, x16...

[beavermml]

can i know what is the maximum GC for pciex4, x8 and x16 before bottleneck occurs. i mean do even nvidia210 use all 16x lane? becoz i have cut my 8400gs card to pcie 1x ( to install on x1 slot ) and i notice no drops ( the GC to slow ) i have x4 slot and i want to install a GC on that slot.. just wanted to know what is the max GC for x4.

 

[DM186]

If I get the question right you are asking, what in the hierarchy of graphic cards (GPU) is each slot allowed? Lets say I have x4 slot you want to know if I put lets say a GT 430 in that slot.

You want to know how much bigger like a GTX 550 would that be it and can't go any higher? So if this is your question then the answer it doesn't matter how big the card is.

The x16, x8, x4, means how fast the card will run in those slots. 16 being the fastest. All cards have to be PCIe compatible. If you get a card that is AGP it will not work in the PCIe slots.

There is no bottlenecking in the slots from any card. Where bottlenecking accures is when your CPU can't keep up with your GPU. I hope this has helped and I wish you good luck.

 

[simon12]

It depends what type of slot to as a PCIE 1 slot has half the band width of a PCIE 2 slot which has half that of a PCIE 3 slot.

 

[Guest]

so you want to know what card you can put in a x4 slot before you get a performance drop off.
ANY card that does not use a 6 pin power supply (no i am NOT confusing the 75 watts power supplied with data transfer!!)

other than that, it leaves the door open for speculation. this might help you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

 

[beavermml]

is that so? which means i can install a 7750 into pcie2 x4 and it will not get any bottleneck? guess i have to try it myself.. if only Tom's have the hierarchy of graphic cards for each GPU available...

 

[DM186]

The x 4 is the speed at which the gpu uses the x 16 is faster. You don't want to start with the x 4 that is for the second or third card in SLI of CF. Here is what i think you are asking for.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fastest-graphics-card-radeon-geforce,3067-7.html

 

[beavermml]

i know about the chart but what i am asking is a chart for each pcie configuration.. let just say that at pciex1.. the most powerful gpu that can go with the slot without having bandwidth bottleneck is nvidia 210 and at pciex4 is 6670 and at x8 is 7850 and at x16 is 7970... just for example...

 

[Guest]

i do not believe a "chart" of what graphics card would be bottlenecked by what PCIx(X) slot is around. i have pondered the same question myself when i look at the x4 slot on my motherboard.

pci-e 2.0 has a data transfer of 500MBs per lane. (as per the wiki link i posted before to help) so a x4 slot is 2000MBs (1.953125GBs) of data transfer. so how to figure out how much data a card transfer is where i have hit a road block.

there has been debates if a x8 slot bottlenecks a high end card. the common consensus is if it does, it is not by much.

IF that is true, again IF THAT IS TRUE; then what card or how do you figure out what card has half the amount of data transfer before saturating a x4 slot?

quite possible looking a 3dmark benches(?)

 

[beavermml]

yup.. that is why im asking if the chart available or not.. becoz as a normal human being, i have no resources to test every single GPU out there... as i have also pcie2 4x and it says it support crossfire.. so i just pondering what is the max card can i install on both pcie ( 16x and 4x) without the 4x bottlenecking the 16x... i regret a little of not doing a a research before buying the board.. jst thought that by mentioning it support crossfire, i thought it is on 8x and 8x for each pcie.

 

[Guest]

i have googled 16x 4x sli and found a few forum discussions, mostly stating a x4 will give a 5% performance hit like:
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=358506
but that is a gtx470. with 7xxx amd and 5xx geforce cards performing better it might be a larger gap.

thats why i figured a low/entry level card not needing a pci-e power connection wouldn't suffer. but from mid range to high end is a guess.

 

[beavermml]

emm.. so that is a wild guess right.. becoz for someone who bought an oem computer maybe dont have a pcie16x slot onboard... it is shame that the oem computer have really powerful cpu.. my university will recylce those computer and sells it very cheap to student.. an HP machine with pcie4x coupled with core2duo e6600 with mATX form factor... i just love to buy one of those machine and couple with a mid-range GPU to be my HTPC/ light gaming build... that is one of the reason i ask the community... never mind that i will artificially capped my frens GPU ( tapped the pcie lane ) to simulate 4x,8x and 16x.. however i have really old GPU.. mine is 4870 and my fren is 4850.. so i can really test how the new gen works..

 

[DM186]

I have to agree with looni there isn't any charts to reflect the PCIe slots just discussinons. You should open this in a discussinon forum as a topic and see what people bring to the table.

 

[beavermml]

Best answer selected by beavermml.