More than 2 PCI Express 16x slot motherboards?

[grrric]

Where are the PCI Express 16x slot motherboards with more than 2 slots?
I want 3 slots for three seperate displays.... I don't want to use dual or tri headed cards.... this is why I have been waiting for PCI Express 16x sloted motherboards. Since the promise of multiple AGP slots never happened "While the AGP 3.0 specification allowed the use of multiple AGP slots on a board, no chipmaker ever implemented this feature into any chipset to date." <http://www.penstarsys.com/previews/graphics/nvidia/sli_cert/>

Edit: Sorry about the link, i always encapsulate my links in <>

 

[thanatos355]

linky no worky bro.

 

[rbV5]

I want 3 slots for three seperate displays.... I don't want to use dual or tri headed cards.... this is why I have been waiting for PCI Express 16x sloted motherboards.

You can do that with 3 regular PCI slots, you didn't have to wait. Why not use a dual or triple head card btw?

While the AGP 3.0 specification allowed the use of multiple AGP slots on a board, no chipmaker ever implemented this feature into any chipset to date

"Technically", ATI's last couple chipsets allowed onboard(agp) + additional AGP board.

 

[grrric]

Couldn't find decent PCI cards that could handle the CAD stuff I wanted to throw at it, for uni not professional work.
My theory was that if I could get a board with multiple AGP or PCI Express 16x slot, i'd be able to purchase cheaper higher performance video cards then if I was to get dual or triple headed cards, cause most mainstream consumer only want a single display.
The Matrox Parhelia 128 Megabyte Triple Head is a bit out of my price range. I could have lived with a dual head card in the past but I really wanted 3, my machine is due for an overhaul now and I want 3 displays.

 

[ribbon13]

*cough*
The Tyan Thunder K8WE has two full x16 PCIe. All other SLI boards have two x16 slots running at x8 bandwidth. The only way to have more than 2 PCIe x16's would be a quad opteron board with nForce Professional 2200 + 3x 2050. Such a board doesn't exist yet. It would also cost $800+

If you want to do serious multi-monitor polygon work get a K8WE and two 3DLabs Realizms 800's. Prepare to spend about $6500.

I would just get a K8WE and two XFX 6600GTs. Thats 4 monitor support and under $3k

Heres a guy that need multi monitor
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=27&threadid=1524499&enterthread=y

 

[alrox]

99% of video cards made in the past 2 years have been dual head.

You could run a quad head non SLI setup with 2 regular PCI-E video card(6600's for cheap) and the DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D. You'd even have a spare PCI-E 4x slot leftover for another card. Granted it wouldn't be 16x, but very very few 3d cards nowadays can stress out 4x bandwidth.

 

[Peter]

... and none will fit a 4x slot.

 

[thanatos355]

they will if you cut out the end of the slot.

 

[gobucks]

if you buy the ATI Xpress 200 with integrated video, you can use the IGP as an extra graphics port, meaning you could use a dual DVI 6800GT or ultra, or X800/X850 to power 2 displays, and the IGP to drive the third.

Anyways, I don't think you'll find any 3x PCIe x16 boards any time soon. The dual ones are for SLI, and since a 3x solution wouldn't be able to do SLI, there is no reason to do it, at least from nvidia's perspective. Besides, these boards are implemented using 20 PCIe lanes total, so it would be hard to split up the lanes 3 ways for graphics + the PCIe x1 lanes. I guess you could do 3x PCIe x6, 2x PCIe x1, but that would require a complete redesign of the chipset, and the market for said chipset is basically you, so unless you want to pay for all the R&D and production costs, I don't think it's gonna happen. Everyone else is fine with using dual outputs on their graphics cards or using PCI.

 

[Peter]

It could be done ... Intel's 7520 chip has three PCIE 8x branches, and with ULi's new M1695 HyperTransport-PCIE tunnel chip, board designers can pile up as many PCIE 8x or 16x branches onto an AMD64 mainboard as you please. One extra M1695 added to the NForce4pro would be able to give you three 16x slots, or six 8x.