Will PCI-E x1 cards work with PCI-E X16 slots?

[Cyrus9008]

as the title states, will the PCI-E 1x card work in a 16x slot and if it does work if I have a video card in the other 16x slot will it affect the performance of the video card? Will everything work flawless?

 

[paperwastage]

as the title states, will the PCI-E 1x card work in a 16x slot and if it does work if I have a video card in the other 16x slot will it affect the performance of the video card? Will everything work flawless?

x1 card will work in a x16 slot

will it affect performance of other x16 slots? It depends on your motherboard and placement of the slots

some mobo (eg 1155 which has limited amount of PCIe lanes) will drive 1st slot at x16 if 2nd slot empty, both slots at x8/x8 if both used

though x8 shouldn't bottleneck any single-GPU solution....

 

[Cyrus9008]

Damn it is an 1155 MOBO too... I have an XFI soundcard I want to use but no PCIe 1x slot to use I wanted ot put it in other 16x slot available but if it's going to slow down the video card I'd rather use onboard sound then. Are you sure this would happen though? is there anyway to check to see if my video card is still running at 16x?

 

[Cyrus9008]

sorry this is the MOBO http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131786

I has one 16x slot and one 4x slot, total would that not mean 20 lanes? so if I have a 16x video card in one slot and a PCIe 1x in the other slot... would that not only take 17 total lanes?

 

[kami]

You should be fine. First of all yes a 1x card can run in a 16x slot, though technically your extra slot is a 4x slot that can hold up to a 16x card.

Sandy bridge has 16 lanes connected directly to the CPU used for graphics and an additional 8 lanes connected to the PCH (southbridge). A lot of these extra lanes get used by the onboard peripherals like USB3 controllers, 3rd party SATA controllers, FireWire, etc. and whatever is leftover is used for extra pci-e slots in addition to the graphics slots.

Most motherboards will have 2 slots for the graphic lanes but since yours is a micro board there's just one meant for graphics it looks like.

I have the non-micro version of your board and it has two 1x slots and one 4x slot in addition to the graphic ones, however there are restrictions. Ifi want to use all 3 extra slots, they can all only operate in 1x mode since the other lanes are being used by other stuff. If I want to use my 4x slot in full 4x mode,I have to disable the 1x slots and one of the USB3 controllers and the eSATA port. Since your board has less onboard stuff you can use your 4x slot at 4x if you want without disabling anything.

Cliff notes: you have nothing to worry about, you should be able to use your soundcard and keep your GPU in full 16x mode, unless there's something asus isn't mentioning here in their fine print.

 

[Cyrus9008]

Wow thanks for such a detailed comprehensive reply answered all my questions and then some

 

[Cyrus9008]

I've been doing some reading on PCIe and that really is amazing technology. Basically any PCIe card will work in an port interchangeably limited only by things such as taping part of a peripheral that might be 16x to make it an 8x. I've never heard of computer components being so versatile like PCIe.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

If you're amazed now, you should look up the crap that us bitcoin miners do - running multiple 16x vid cards using a whole bunch of PCI-E 1x risers

 

[Cyrus9008]

I will check that out

 

[ViviTheMage]

quick answer; YES

 

[rsutoratosu]

I just bought a pcie x8 riser off ebay to run my pcie x16 video cards

All they do is saw off the edge.. so you can actually diy if you can find a cheap pci x16 extender and saw it off yourself..

 

[Sunny129]

If you're amazed now, you should look up the crap that us bitcoin miners do - running multiple 16x vid cards using a whole bunch of PCI-E 1x risers

but that limits all those x16 video cards to x1 bandwidth, does it not? i know that kind of reduction in bandwidth would slow down my distributed computing tremendously, or else i'd be using this method to add more GPUs to my rig that otherwise wouldn't fit...i'm assuming that x1 bandwidth is more than enough to productively mine for bitcoins?

 

[notposting]

Also...not necessarily. Some boards have issue with storage (RAID) cards in the x16 slots. Try reading user reviews to see if it gets mentioned at all.

 

[Cyrus9008]

Also...not necessarily. Some boards have issue with storage (RAID) cards in the x16 slots. Try reading user reviews to see if it gets mentioned at all.

It's a XFI sounds card too notposting, not a RAID card

Also I am going to have to take the metal part off of the card to fit it in the mobo won't i.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

but that limits all those x16 video cards to x1 bandwidth, does it not? i know that kind of reduction in bandwidth would slow down my distributed computing tremendously, or else i'd be using this method to add more GPUs to my rig that otherwise wouldn't fit...i'm assuming that x1 bandwidth is more than enough to productively mine for bitcoins?

True, but bitcoin is one DC app that is incredibly bandwidth independent.

 

[Cyrus9008]

YOu have got to be kidding me lol that's awesome

 

[KingFatty]

Just speculation - wouldn't using a discrete sound card free up some CPU resources that would otherwise be dedicated to running the on-board motherboard integrated sound card?

If someone has a mobo that drops the PCIe of the video card from 16x down to 8x, it would be interesting if the drop in performance would be so small that it's offset by an increase in performance by using a discrete soundcard. But I guess it also depends whether the performance is GPU and/or CPU limited.

 

[Topweasel]

Just speculation - wouldn't using a discrete sound card free up some CPU resources that would otherwise be dedicated to running the on-board motherboard integrated sound card?

If someone has a mobo that drops the PCIe of the video card from 16x down to 8x, it would be interesting if the drop in performance would be so small that it's offset by an increase in performance by using a discrete soundcard. But I guess it also depends whether the performance is GPU and/or CPU limited.

Think about it this way processing sound in its most basic form really hasn't increased in resources (clock cycles) then it has in the past. Same thing with Nics, modems, and other devices. So really what was a pain on PIII800 has almost no measurable affect on current CPU. So no any measurable loss of performance by video card would never be regained by switching to a discrete card. The just isn't a real measurable overhead on onboard audio anymore.