Motherboard with PCI Express x4 socket

[imported_andro]

I am trying to find a motherboard either AMD/Intel based (preferably AMD based) which has a x4 PCI Express Lane. I have an x4 card which I need to test and I am not able to find any motherboard which has an x4 lane. All the ones I searched have x1 and x16 and some with x8. Can someone help me with my search
Thanks,

 

[MDE]

You can use the x4 card in an x16 or x8 slot, they should be downwards compatible. That opens up just about every Nvidia SLI or ATI Crossfire motherboard for you (assuming you're also using a PCIe x16 video card. Otherwise just get any board with an x16 slot). One board I know of that has a true x4 slot is the Asus A8N-E.

 

[imported_andro]

Thanks for pointing to the ASUS mb. That is exactly what I was looking for. I also found the DFI Lan Party, but I am not sure how it performs, one of the mb's didnt work for me, so a little skeptical.
Also about plugging an x4 in x16 slot, I think the PCIExp spec says that the x16 must work in x16 and x1 mode, but the intermediate configs are optional, so I am wondering if the other motherboards do not support it natively.

 

[Doug117]

What the heck uses x4?

 

[papaHesch]

Andro,

A lot of the previous boards based on the nf4 chipset had 4x slots that run in 2x mode (a8n-sli, dfi lanparty, etc). The new a8n32-sli based on the new neforce16x chipset from DFI and Asus has a true 4x slot but I would just use an a8n-sli nf4 chipset and put the board in sli mode. This is a much cheaper option. This will give you two 8x pci-e slots. All of the video cards today do not use that much juice anyway.

Doug117,

I have a LSI SCSI Raid controller that uses 8x and 4x slots. It is a little over kill but why not.

Papah

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: Doug117
What the heck uses x4?

Common uses:
x1: basically anything that's going on a 32bit, 33mhz PCI -> PCIe transition
x4: Infiniband controllers
x8: RAID cards (both SCSI and SATA)
x16: graphics cards

-Erwos

 

[imported_andro]

Doug,
As erwos mentioned, I am working on the infiniband and 10GE space and I have a chip to test on the x4 slot of a motherboard. Although I have tried with the regular x8 slots, some of the motherboard have the support, but a lot of them dont work, depending on the PCIe revisions they are following, but I think in the future everything will slowly transition to the next gen PCIe 2.0, where instead of 2.5Gbps x1 link you will get a 5Gbps x1 link, but by then the interoperability will be well proven on the existing Gen 1 PCIe.

Andro

 

[VERTIGGO]

I just got the A8N32 SLi. It has 2x16, 1x4 and 3 PCIs, so your card fits right above the first GPU in its own slot.

 

[A5]

The MSI Neo4 Platinum (NF4 Ultra) has an x4 slot also