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16x PCI-E SLI question

M

Martyuk39

Member
I like the idea of the reported near-double performance using SLI. But am I right in saying if you have a 16x PCI-E card then you need a 16x PCI-E slot, so for SLI you need 2 of them? And there isn't currently a motherboard with 2 16x PCI-E slots around at the moment so it's a non-starter. Is that right?

I might have misunderstood some of the technology - I frequently do...
 
The only boards with 2x PCI X16 slots are in the intel workstation camp.

Dual PCI-E X16 slot desktop boards are coming soon, though. Probably within the next couple of months.
 
Intel workstations - I imagine that means boards costing a fortune that are not for mainstream use, and require dual Xeons, that sort of thing
 
What's supremely amusing is that they've done some testing and it seems in most benchmarks PCIe X16 has no performance advantage over PCIe X4.

PCIe numbers can almost exactly be coorelated to AGP numbers bandwidth wise.

Since we're not even using the full potential of AGP 4x in most games, A motherboard with 2 8x PCIe slots would work just as well as a board with 1 x16 slot. I'd imagine.
 
AGP8X = 2GB/sec unidirectional
PCIe 8X = 2GB/sec bidirectional

PCIe 8X is faster than AGP8X, there was at most a 1-2% boost from AGP4X to 8X, and a smaller one going to PCIe 16X from AGP8X. 2 PCIe 8X slots makes a lot of sense. I'm sure there would be a market for it and I don't see why it would be hard to do with current chipset that support 20 PCIe lanes.
 
What they should do have 2 - pci-e 8x (sli), 1 pci-e 4x, 2 - pci 64/133mhz slots & 1 - 32 bit pci slot.

This config would benefit alot of ppl.

Regards,
Jose
 
Originally posted by: jose
What they should do have 2 - pci-e 8x (sli), 1 pci-e 4x, 2 - pci 64/133mhz slots & 1 - 32 bit pci slot.

This config would benefit alot of ppl.

Regards,
Jose
Click to expand...

No 64 bit slots. Here is what would probably be most benefitial.

If you have a board that supports 20 lanes..

2 8x
3 PCIe 1x
2 PCI

This would be somehwat along the lines of the mix of the old boards. 3 PCI 2 ISA. Eventually PCI will go the way of ISA, anyways. So it's good to have PCIe 1x slots. I think PCIe 1x cards are compatible in any sized slots. So you could eventually move onto mostly 4x slots.
250MB each way will probably last a while for things like GigE, storage adapters, sound cards, external interfaces (USB, firewire, etc..)

PCIe can also be adapted to be used in external situations, so one day it might replace USB and firewire for cameras, too.
 
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