Asus P5Nsli question

[Isy]

Newbie question: -

I?m waiting for the Asus p5nsli board to be released before I start my Conroe build. I think this is the perfect board for me (right price, don?t care about overclocking).
This board has two pci-e slots that share 16X lanes (i.e. 8X each) or the board can run 16X on one slot.
My question is:- Does the sli performance deteriorate when using two 8X pci-e lanes rather than two 16X pci-e lanes. E.g. do both cards run at a lower setting?

Also, how would a single nvidia 7950GX2 run on this board (i.e. does it run at full speed or does the performance deteriorate because the board has two pci-e slots that share 16X lanes)?

 

[ForumIdiot]

is two card configured into ONE card, so it will run at full speed...

 

[Isy]

Do you have to have an sli board to run this card?

 

[Skott]

Not 100% sure but I believe the two video cards each run at 8x independently but together on the one card they reach 16x. I think thats how its setup. So the 7950 runs as a whole at 16x. I think thats how its explained in layman terms.

Not sure how its going to run on the P5N-SLI performance-wise. Pretty good I imagine. Now, assuming you can fit two (2x7950) 7950s into SLI on the P5N-SLI to make a quad-SLI you wont see much performance increase over a single 7950 setup until you get into the really high resolutions. At least thats the info I have seen from reviews of mobos that can run Quad SLI (2x7950) so far. So resolutions 1600x1200 and under wont get any benefit from Quad-SLI (2x7950s). I'm assuming (yeah, we know what happens when one assumes) that wont change with the P5N-SLI mobo.