Any of the new P67 boards with 2x 16x PCIe lanes?

[HumblePie]

Everything I'm seeing shows 8x lanes in dual mode. So if I xfire I lose bandwith on the bards. More so if I try for trifire. Is there any plans for boards that are not this limited?

 

[alaricljs]

It's not the boards it's the P67. You'll have to wait for the next chipset release... X67 I think?

 

[hclarkjr]

from what i have read the full bandwidth is not being used at 8x8, correct?

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's because SB itself only supports x8/x8.

 

[ZipSpeed]

The difference in performance between 8x/8x and 16x/16x is a few percentage points. Doubt most people will notice the difference unless you perhaps game at extreme high resolutions with say Eyefinity. Like 3 x 30" monitors at 7680x1600

 

[coffeejunkee]

It's not the boards it's the P67. You'll have to wait for the next chipset release... X67 I think?

Actually it's the pci-e controller in the cpu. It has 16 lanes, so the best you're gonna get on a P67 board is x8/x8. Which is sufficient for most cards today. Search for test comparing to x16/x16, the difference is usually small. If you want more lanes you'll have to go X58. Or wait for X68, which will likely have pci-e 3.0.

Exception: some P67 boards have an NF200 chip for multiplexing pci-e lanes. This will give fex. x8/x8/x8, but in the end it'll all have to pass through the same 16 cpu lanes. NF200 worked quite well on P55 boards but was only needed when running 3 cards. The question is if NF200 is even needed on P67 since the lanes from the southbridge are 2.0 while the ones on P55 are 1.1 (so half the bandwidth).

 

[HumblePie]

Well after some research, there was suppose to be the MSI P67 Big Bang Marshall P67 board with full 16x slots all the way. Actually 4 way PCIe 2.0 16x quadfire or quad sli.

http://www.techpowerup.com/136134/M...67-Motherboard-with-Lucid-Hydra-Pictured.html

It was suppose to be released this month but haven't heard word about it except for a few articles from CES.

Which means that the limitation wouldn't be the SB CPU at all.

The reason I ask, is because I'm wanting to go eye-finity with a massive resolution and high anti aliasing with tri-fire 6970's or maybe 6950's unlocked to 6970's. One HardOCP benchmarks that tested it should a pretty big dip in performance doing that compared to say 25x16 resolution between all the different bandwidth configurations.

Oh well... maybe I'll hold out a little longer before I scratch my upgrade itch.

 

[coffeejunkee]

Which means that the limitation wouldn't be the SB CPU at all.

in the end it'll all have to pass through the same 16 cpu lanes.

The Big Bang Marshall probably has the NF200, just like the UD7 and Maximus. Or maybe it has the Hydra chip. Or both. The NF200 worked well on P55 tri-card setups. But you'd be slightly better off with X58.

The question is if NF200 is needed on P67 boards, since the lanes from the southbridge have enough bandwidth for most cards, fex. Asus P8P67 Pro has 3 pci-e x16 slots (x8/x8/x4). At the moment the alternative is still X58, but cpu wise you would be better off with SB.

The story might be different on very high resolutions and the only thing that can really answer your question are benchmarks.