Running non-SLI, can I use my card in the bottom slot?

[fixmarky]

I know traditionally most people put their card in the top slot, but my passively cooled card and the northbrdige cooler on my k8n diamond plus make this impossible. Will I run into any problems if I just run my card in the bottom slot?

 

[fixmarky]

bump?

 

[Tig Ol Bitties]

You really should just try it yourself and find out through benchmarks, its not gonna hurt. This is more of a mobo question, but I honestly dont see anything wrong with using the other slot, but I dont know what your mobo and bios settings are like either.

 

[imported_Crusader]

I run mine in the bottom slot. But Im going to move it to the top one now and see if theres any difference.

 

[fixmarky]

My mobo is a k8n diamond plus, and after comparing my videocard to a picture of the motherboard I'm positive it won't fit in the top slot.

Why a picture and not the board itself? Board is being RMAd for a bad BIOS (never use a Windows application to change anything on the BIOS level, no matter what MSI tells you).

If I can't use my 7600gt on the bottom slot I'll just return it for another one right now so I won't have additional downtime once my RMA gets back.

PS: The K8N Diamond Plus uses the SLIX16 chipset.

 

[LukeMan]

I have the same question pretty much.

I upgraded from an x850xt to an x1800xt. The x1800xt is a longer card, and I didn't have much room on the top x16 slot, plus somehow the card wouldnt sit correctly, so I put it in the bottom x16 slot. The computer boots up (screen had a blinking underscore durring boot-up), windows came up fine. I tried playing Counter-Strike Source, and my stress test only gave me a few extra fps compared to the x850xt(172fps as compared to 164fps on the x850xt). This card is a much more powerful card(or at least I thought it was), so I don't know what to make of it. Could the x16 slot be running at half speed (x8) since sli mode runs at dual x8? My motherboard: Asus A8N-Sli Deluxe. I have the newest Catalyst Drivers installed.

 

[LukeMan]

"In Normal mode, only the PCI Express blue slot can be used for PCI Express x16 graphics cards. The PCI Express black slot functions as a PCI Express x1 slot."

I guess that means I won't get the full potential out of my card be keeping it on the bottom(black) slot. If anyone else has experience with this, especially this motherboard, then let me know please.

 

[keeleysam]

What you'll need to do is put the switch in SLi mode so the bottom slot turns into an x8 slot. You will be good to go.

 

[LukeMan]

the card still won't run at full potential though will it? Is there somewhere I can go to check what speed the PCI-E is running at?

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: LukeMan
the card still won't run at full potential though will it? Is there somewhere I can go to check what speed the PCI-E is running at?

If its running on pcie 8* there would be no performance diff, as cards havent even saturated the agp 8*, pcie 8* would be fine as it got same bandwidth.

 

[imported_ST]

it will work and in my testing with a 7800ultra, there was no difference between x16 pcie and x8 pcie when used....

 

[keeleysam]

Originally posted by: ST
it will work and in my testing with a 7800ultra, there was no difference between x16 pcie and x8 pcie when used....

7800U!?!?

 

[LukeMan]

ya, I just got it to fit into the blue slot, and saw no difference in fps performance for css. Really makes me sad though, I was expecting lots of performance difference between the x850xt and the x1800xt, but only noticed about 10 fps difference on the stress test (162 for the x850xt and 172 for the x1800xt), with same video settings in game(res, aa, af, etc.).

 

[Crescent13]

Keelysam, Didn't you hear that nvidia was coming out with new 7800 cards? They are making a 7800 Ultra, 7800 ZX (i think), and 7800XT.

 

[APCOR]

I actually had a problem with this berfore. On my first sli mobo - stuck a 7800gtx in the black slot (i didnt think it mattered) and had fair performance but was a bit sluggish in FEAR and QUAKE4. So I ran 3dmark05 and scored 2000 points below where it should have been (between 8-9000). Spent countless hours trying to figure it out and then by chance stuck it in the blue slot. 3d mark shot up 2000 points and FEAR & Q4 ran like a champ. I doubt you would see a difference in older games but there is a performance hit. It even states in the manual (asus a8n) you are supposed to use the blue slot for single card config.

never tried switching sli mode to bottom slot - but never knew what the problem was until after the fact

 

[Tegeril]

I would argue that CS:S is not the best benchmark for your new card's performance. Try a newer title that most likely isn't as cpu limited. And 172 or 162 fps is absolutely undetectable.

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake

Originally posted by: LukeMan
the card still won't run at full potential though will it? Is there somewhere I can go to check what speed the PCI-E is running at?

If its running on pcie 8* there would be no performance diff, as cards havent even saturated the agp 8*, pcie 8* would be fine as it got same bandwidth.

Can you prove this, since we don't have much on but a cut down 7800GS that is more like a 6800ultra, how do we really know if the Dual GT cards, or the XTX or 7900GTX or GX2 don't take up more then AGP 8x bandwidth, or that we could ever actually use that bandwidth since it was always theoretical and involved a lot of shortcuts making getting near that theoretical ammount almost impossible.

So while I agree we are not using anywhere near 16X and probably lower then 8X how do we really know that we wouldn't have already hit the cap in AGP bandwidth as we pretty much did with power.