Pair of 8800GTs running at PCI-E 8x?

[angry hampster]

I've got an M2N-SLI deluxe motherboard which supports dual graphics cards running at 8X PCI-E. Would running a pair of 8800GTs or 9600GTs in 8X hinder their performance significantly? Does anyone have any colorful and fun charts?

 

[sutahz]

Though I don't have any colorfully fun charts my vote is no.
Perhaps during 1% of your gaming time you'll need more then the 2GB/s afforded by the 8X lanes can provide.

Which do you think is more of a hinderance, having your video cards on 8x lanes or a 3GHz X2? What resolution you going to use this powerhouse at?

 

[PingSpike]

PCI-E performance scaling with the 8800GTS

 

[MarcVenice]

The article from tom's hardware forgets one thing though, and that's SLI/Crossfire, and how that would affect things. I know that like 6-12 months ago AT did something similar but then in SLI, on a p5n-e sli mobo. The conclusion was that 8x pci-e was sufficient for SLI. Bad thing is, I can't remember if they used 8800gts 320/640mb cards, or 8800gtx's. A 8800gt 512mb is ofcourse a bit faster then a 8800gts 512/640mb. In the end, I think you should ditch the mobo, and go for 780i. Consider if that's worth it for you ...

 

[lopri]

Chopping off the PCIe (Ver. 1) by half definitely affects the performance negatively. However, don't forget that SLI/CF use the special connectors which are essentially PCIe lanes.