Originally posted by: happy medium
Originally posted by: Viditor
Originally posted by: taltamir
Originally posted by: Viditor
Originally posted by: PCTC2
Actually, it is 2x 16x and 2x 8x slots, not 4x 16x PCIe.
Taken directly from the Gigabyte website:
Expansion Slots
1. 2 x PCI Express x16 slots (PCIE_16_A, PCIE_16_B) supporting ATI CrossFireX? technology (Note 3) (The PCI Express x16 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
2. 2 x PCI Express x8 slots (PCIE_8_A, PCIE_8_B) supporting ATI CrossFireX? technology
3. 1 x PCI Express x1 slot
4. 2 x PCI slots
Good catch...it appears to be a contradiction in their documentation because in the description section just above that it says:
"3. Quad PCI-E 2.0 x16 graphics interfaces with ATI CrossFireX? support for extreme gaming performance" as well...
thats because "Quad PCI-E 2.0 x16" is their "product brand" and not a "specification"...
Really? Cool info...thanks!
Correct me if i'm wrong ,but doesn't a pci-e x8 2.0 = a 16x pci-e 1.0. Are they the same amount of lanes?
The way it works is that a southbridge has X pcie lanes. (physical connections in the south bridge chip) which can be connected by the motherboard manufacturer in 1x, 4x, 8x, or 16x configurations. Video card slots typically have 4, 8, or 16 lanes attached to them, which transmit data in parallel.
pcie v2.0 has twice the bandwidth per lane... so each lane transmits twice the data per second.
This means 8 lanes of pcie2 transmit the same data as 16 lanes of pcie1. But the way it works is different.
pcie can be connected in a short, long, or video card type slot. But are not necessarily limited by device. Short and long ad compatible (so plugging a short device in a long slot will work, it will just underutilize it.. I THINK, but am not sure, that you could plug a long device into a short port and just have slower speed... but don't quote me on that)
The board in question has 49 pcie2 lanes. 1 going to a regular slot, and the rest split in a 16, 16, 8, 8 to the four video card slots. the two 8 lanes are as fast as a 16x pcie slot and the two 16 lanes one would be equivalent to 32x pcie1.
It is possible that the chipset has some more lanes that are just not utilized... boards have been known to use a north bridge that has some pcie lanes to get supposedly 16x on two video card slots, but those are slow as the data has to go from card A>north bridge>south bridge>card B. Instead of Card A>southbridge>Card B (and vice versa). And it also bogs down the computers bus slowing down other communication.