Any modern 2-lane (x2) PCI-e Graphics cards?

[BiggerJim]

I have a mini-ITX mobo with a single PCI-e x2 slot. Does anyone know of any modern x2 graphics cards? I know Zotac make a couple of x1 boards (a GT610 and GT730) but I'd like to squeeze as much output out of the thing as as I can.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

1) Use a 1x and call it a day.
2) Use a longer card and mod the PCI slot to accept it. (Just cut or otherwise get rid of the plastic.)

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/249291-30-card

 

[lavaheadache]

why not just source a different ITX board ?

 

[BiggerJim]

1) Use a 1x and call it a day.
2) Use a longer card and mod the PCI slot to accept it. (Just cut or otherwise get rid of the plastic.)

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/249291-30-card

Thanks for the reply.

i) Use a x1 card: I'd prefer to have x2 lanes of juicy PCIe goodness, for bandwidth's sake

ii) Butcher motherboard's x2 slot and fit a x8 or x16 GPU card: OK, that would mean I'd be getting my desired two lanes of bandwidth, but a) I imagine a card that's expecting 8 or 16 lanes would be optimised to run with that number, rather than two, b) it means spending hours of pulling apart a densely packed NAS4Free box, and c) involves performing surgery on the motherboard, and any physician can tell you such interventions carry concomitant risks ;-)

They're both workarounds, so thanks, but in an ideal world someone will come along and say: "Oh! You want a FlangeBracket GT730 Demon card, that's a little-known but high-quality Japanese** manufacturer's x2 GPU card!" 🙂

**irrelevant detail

 

[BiggerJim]

why not just source a different ITX board ?

Well, partly because I've got the entire system assembled already and in service, and don't fancy spending hours replacing the motherboard if I can avoid it. But I did have a look around for BGA1150** mini-ITX boards that feature x8 or x16 slots and couldn't see any. Do you know of any?

**I want a reasonably quick but silent fanless system, so I'm thinking J1900/J2900

 

[lavaheadache]

Well, partly because I've got the entire system assembled already and in service, and don't fancy spending hours replacing the motherboard if I can avoid it. But I did have a look around for mini-ITX boards that feature x8 or x16 slots and couldn't see any. Do you know of any?

mostly any newer one will. What cpu do you have?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%20600009028&IsNodeId=1&name=Mini%20ITX

Also, I'm not sure how replacing a motherboard takes hours. I just swapped out my z77e itx build for a z87 itx, didn't even bother reinstalling windows (newer windows 7&8 can usually sort out a system swap) in 30 mins. All I had to do was double check the device manager to tie up any loose ends and re-activate.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Thanks for the reply.

i) Use a x1 card: I'd prefer to have x2 lanes of juicy PCIe goodness, for bandwidth's sake

Probably won't matter much.

ii) Butcher motherboard's x2 slot and fit a x8 or x16 GPU card: OK, that would mean I'd be getting my desired two lanes of bandwidth, but a) I imagine a card that's expecting 8 or 16 lanes would be optimised to run with that number, rather than two,

Nah. They work with what they're given.

b) it means spending hours of pulling apart a densely packed NAS4Free box, and c) involves performing surgery on the motherboard, and any physician can tell you such interventions carry concomitant risks ;-)

Wait... this is a Nas4Free box? Why in the heck do you need a discrete GPU?

(I'm currently thinking of reasons... and...)

1) You'll be more limited by driver support than anything else. Might want to switch to Linux if you're trying to do server duties and DC on the same box.

2) Does the rest of your hardware (CPU, etc) support PCI Direct Access (Vt-d)? Stuff like this is why my home server is a uATX rig now.

Anyway, after running FreeNAS for 2 years and now vanilla FreeBSD (both share guts with Nas4Free), I'd be tempted to thank my lucky stars there's even driver support for what you do have and declare victory.

 

[BiggerJim]

Probably won't matter much.

Nah. They work with what they're given.

Wait... this is a Nas4Free box? Why in the heck do you need a discrete GPU?

(I'm currently thinking of reasons... and...)

1) You'll be more limited by driver support than anything else. Might want to switch to Linux if you're trying to do server duties and DC on the same box.

2) Does the rest of your hardware (CPU, etc) support PCI Direct Access (Vt-d)? Stuff like this is why my home server is a uATX rig now.

Anyway, after running FreeNAS for 2 years and now vanilla FreeBSD (both share guts with Nas4Free), I'd be tempted to thank my lucky stars there's even driver support for what you do have and declare victory.

🙂 it's a NAS4Free box now, but I was going to install Win 7 and give it to my child to play some fairly undemanding games - Minecraft, WoW, Aion, that kind of thing. This is the mobo:

http://www.supermicro.co.uk/products/motherboard/celeron/X10/X10SBA.cfm

If possible I'd like to get the graphics as fast as possible with the PCIe x2 slot. Are you saying that you think the difference between a (x1) board and a (x8/16) board using two lanes would be negligible?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

With a very low-end card like a 730? Yeah, it wouldn't make an appreciable difference. Especially with an Atom CPU - you're going to tend to be CPU bottlenecked almost no matter what you do.

With a low-midrange card (if you wanted to pick up a used 650 or the always-popular 750Ti) I'd believe that the 1x lane might bottleneck you vs. 2x lanes. But again. Dat CPU.

Still, that explains why it's got a 2x slot - that's typical for storage controllers (2x for the low end ones and 4x for the nice ones.)

But you'd almost be better off selling that board (could probably get $100 for it, it is server hardware after all) and buying a desktop-oriented MB/CPU combo with a larger PCI-E slot.

Or even stretch the budget a bit and get an H81 ITX board with a Celeron 3xxx series or something. Should set you back around $120 and would have a no-joke x16 PCI-E slot.

Likewise, an A8 APU and an FM2 motherboard (if you're an AMD fan) would be around $150 and you wouldn't even need a graphics card anymore.

 

[Ferzerp]

There is no such thing as an x2 slot, physically. Also, if you read your link that is physically an x8 slot, but only 2 lanes available to it.

edit: Also, that is PCIe 2.0, so read http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/1.html . Your PCIe 2.0 x2 throughput is similar to their PCIe 1.1 x4 benchmark.

In short, don't worry about it too much. Anything you would reasonably put in there is fine.