Geforce 970 GTX - PCI 8x vs PCI 16x

Hello

I have a Geforce 970 GTX.

Because myu onboard soundcard is defective (and my Pc otherwise function fine) i ordered a Asus Xonar Soundcard which uses those small PCI Express ports.

Unfortunately the board only has 2 of these, and the one which is free when the graphic card is in PCI-express port 1 makes the soundcard recieve static noise which is annoying as hell in headset. However if i place the 970 in the secondary PCI express slot, and my soundcard in a different one (which makes more room around it) there is zero static noise...

Problem is that the Geforce 970 GTX will not be running at X16 mode but at X8 mode. Will this have any real impact on performance?

About 1%...so, no.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/21.html

Forgot to mention its PCI Express 2.0 so its 4 % in difference... Might consider paying 10-12 $ to exhange the soundcard to a PCI one instead

Yep... ~4% then...

Up to you if you want to do that...

I think it will annoy me too much to not exhange it

You could just go with a USB sound card. It's out of the case so no RF pickup and doesn't use up any slots.

USB sounds cards, in my limited experience, are worse than onboard... are there solid ones out there?

Pro sound had been using them so the quality has been established. I'm not sure about gaming on them. All kinds of price points depending on quality and features.

You can also look into using a HDMI audio extractor or the audio output on the back of your monitor if it has one.