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How to enable PCI-e 4x on DFI LanParty LT X48-T2R?

G

Goi

Diamond Member
Hi,

I have a DFI LanParty LT X48-T2R motherboard that has faulty SATA ports, but otherwise the system is fine. I've bought a Marvell 6Gbps 2-port PCI-e SATA card based on the Marvell 9128 chipset, and I plugged it into the motherboard's PCI-e 4x slot. However, during bootup, I'm informed that the card is still running at PCI-e 1x(2.5Gbps). How do I get it to run at a faster speed? I couldn't find any settings in the BIOS, and DFI's support forum seem to have died along with the LanParty. 🙁

Edit: Specs of the Marvell 9128 shows that it supports PCI-Express 2.0 1x for 5Gbps bandwidth.
Specs for my motherboard show that it has 2 PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots supporting ATI CrossFireX technology, 1 PCI-Express x16 slot (x4 electrical) and 1 PCI-Express x1 slot. Why is the single lane on my motherboard only 2.5Gbps instead of 5Gbps?
 
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need to know what you have in all the other pcie slots...it may be defaulting to x1 if another slot is populated..might want to ck the manual or wesite for lane operation...
 
The card is capable of PCIe 2.0 1x, but if you're plugging it into a PCIe 1.0 slot. While it may be capable of 5 Gbps, it only has one lane to work with regardless of speed. It can't magically create more lanes if they're running at lower speeds.

So in your scenario, you'll get one lane @ 2.5 Gbps; the lowest common denominator between the card restrictions (# of lanes = 1) and slot restrictions (speed = PCIe 1.0).

To confirm: If you plug the SATA card into one of the PCIe 2.0 16x slots, do you get the full 5 Gbps, as expected?
 
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Yeah, the PCI-E x4 slot on that mobo is driven by the southbridge, so I believe that it is only PCI-E 1.0, not 2.0. So if your disk controller is x1, then that's all you're going to get.
 
I have no other PCIe devices other than my video card(4850x2) and the SATA card.

So I should try plugging in the SATA card to the other x16 slot? Will it affect my video card by cutting available bandwidth to 8x only?
 
Goi said:
I have no other PCIe devices other than my video card(4850x2) and the SATA card.

So I should try plugging in the SATA card to the other x16 slot? Will it affect my video card by cutting available bandwidth to 8x only?
Click to expand...
I would try it. Yes, it will drop to an 8x/8x configuration but you're probably not maxing the 16x bandwidth in the first place.

See this link for comprehensive analysis of PCIe scaling:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/25.html

That's not much of a disadvantage in my opinion, but you'll have to decide for yourself whether the improved SATA performance is worth a 1-2% hit in graphics performance.
 
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