I dont understand the pcie slots on my mobo

Burninate35 · Oct 22, 2008

I am getting a p5q pro motherboard.

When I put two graphics cards in that are not crossfire, do I get one 16x and one 4x? or two 8x? or one 16 and one 8?

The reason I ask...

I have an 8800gtx and I plan to buy an 8600gt or similar card to specifically be for physx. I want to know if the 8600gt will be running at 8 or 4x?

Also if anyone happens to know what kind of performance will I get out of the 8600gt only doing physx? I want to let my 8800gtx just deal with rendering.

Thanks

Brolloks · Oct 22, 2008

The P5Q Pro you have can only host two video cards in crossfire, you will need a nvidia chipset based board to run SLI. Yyou can put either the 8800GTX or 8600GT in the board you have now, but not both.

Also you cannot run 8800GTX and 8600GT together on one board even with a nvidia board, the cards have to be the same, either two 8800GTX's or 8600GT's in your case

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions that needs clarification

smokie mcpott · Oct 22, 2008

for clarification, you can run both cards on the same board, but you will NOT be able to utilize crossfire
Crossfire=ATI cards only
SLi=nvidia cards only

you cannot SLi 2 nvidia cards with different cores (eg. the 2 cards you have)
your board does not support SLi

Dominick · Oct 22, 2008

After reading up on physx (yes im a newb did not know what physx was)
and rereading your question they should both run in 16x (correct me if i'm wrong) you basically want your 8800gtx as the GPU and the 8600gt as the PPU obviously you will not be linking the 2 cards.

But somebody correct me if i'm wrong.

Burninate35 said:
I am getting a p5q pro motherboard.

When I put two graphics cards in that are not crossfire, do I get one 16x and one 4x? or two 8x? or one 16 and one 8?

The reason I ask...

I have an 8800gtx and I plan to buy an 8600gt or similar card to specifically be for physx. I want to know if the 8600gt will be running at 8 or 4x?

Also if anyone happens to know what kind of performance will I get out of the 8600gt only doing physx? I want to let my 8800gtx just deal with rendering.

Thanks

Burninate35 · Oct 22, 2008

I don't thik it will be two x16 slots. I think the first slot will always be 16 and the second will be in either 8 or 4x but I am not sure.

I just wanted to know before I bought the motherboard and the extra card.

jason4207 · Oct 22, 2008

P5Q is P45, and all P45's run in either x16 mode or x8/x8 mode. So, if you insert the 8600GT in the 2nd slot then both cards will get PCIe2.0x8.

Brolloks, and Smokie: The OP isn't asking about SLI or X-fire. He wants to use the 8600GT as a PPU. I'm pretty sure this is possible on any mobo that has enough PCIe slots, but I've never tried it.

Burninate35 · Oct 22, 2008

That is better is guess. I am just not sure because I heard that the board only does x8 x8 when in crossfire and otherwise it does x16 and x4.

x8 x8 would be better because the 8800gtx will not be bottlenecked by that (at least not much at all) and that way the physics processor aka 8600gt will not be bottlencked by the 4x.

can anyone conferm that it is x8 x8?

and does anyone know how good the 8600 will be at physx. I dont care about benchmarks (like if it gets me some points in vantage or something) just game performance.

smokie mcpott · Oct 22, 2008

I am pretty sure that the 8600 cannot possibly be bottlenecked by a x4 pcie

jason4207 · Oct 22, 2008

Burninate35 said:
That is better is guess. I am just not sure because I heard that the board only does x8 x8 when in crossfire and otherwise it does x16 and x4.

x8 x8 would be better because the 8800gtx will not be bottlenecked by that (at least not much at all) and that way the physics processor aka 8600gt will not be bottlencked by the 4x.

can anyone conferm that it is x8 x8?

and does anyone know how good the 8600 will be at physx. I dont care about benchmarks (like if it gets me some points in vantage or something) just game performance.

Since the 8600GT is dedicated to PPU it should work just fine.

P35 has x16/x4 all the time. P45 is x16 in the 1st slot, but if anything is plugged into the 2nd slot that x16 gets split into x8/x8. There is no x4 on P45. Both of your cards should do fine in PCIe2.0x8 at resolutions/settings that are playable on your hardware. You don't need to worry about PCIe bandwidth until you get into the more powerful cards and then only if you're running 2560x1600 w/ max settings.

Burninate35 · Oct 22, 2008

wow thank you.

very clear reply.

Do you think that later on i could use this board for a gtx280 and then use my 8800gtx for physx? Or would the bottleneck be too huge?

I was hoping that in a year or two I could get a quad core when they are cheep, as well as a card in the gtx 260-280 range. I am looking forward to physx becoming more advanced and I think that using an 8800gtx would be great for very advanced future physx

physics are my favorite part of games by far. I play the game "Phun" for hours on end.

If anyone has not played it before I suggest you give it a DL

I dont understand the pcie slots on my mobo

Burninate35

Member

Brolloks

Benching Senior on Siesta, Premium Member #8

smokie mcpott

Member

Dominick

Member

Burninate35

Member

jason4207

Senior Member

Burninate35

Member

smokie mcpott

Member

jason4207

Senior Member

Burninate35

Member

Similar threads