Please explain this to me..

[TickleMyElmo]

So I have included a picture of my motherboard and have a couple questions about it.

1. If I was to install my GPU in the circled slot would it affect performance?

2. Next to the question mark it says Multi-GPU SLI/CFX support.
What are the differences between 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 SafeSlots (CPU), 3 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots (PCH), and 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slot (PCH) and what exactly does all that mean?

Could I use my GPU in any of those slots and still have the same performance or is/are there faster ones?

Thanks again guys!

 

[S_I_N]

ok so the safe slots are the ones that have the metal bracing around them. the 3x pcie 3.0 2 slots are the 3 smaller slots on the board. the very bottom is another 3.0 x16 slot for a third gpu or any other pcie device. The top most safe slot is wired for full x16 the other 2 are only wired as x8 look at back of board and you'll see what I mean. In all reality the best is the x16 wired slot but you wont lose alot if you put it in an x8 slot. maybe 2-5 fps overall from what I researched a while ago.

so my advice put your gpu in top slot as I dont see it interfering with anything at all its spaced far enough down even the beefiest coolers should work fine.

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

Top x16 slot is a x16/x8, middle x16 slot is x8, bottom x16 slot is x4, I went to Newegg and looked that board up and was able to zoom in. Also I downloaded the manual.

 

[S_I_N]

I found a pic of the rear of the board and it showed 16 8 8 cpu only has 24 lanes the board does not have a plex chip so no additional lanes youll need to find better pics check out oc3d

 

[EarthDog]

Was going to say, its all in the manual...

8x pcie3.0 is about 1% loss....


Also, just because a slot is electrical 8x, doesnt mean the cpu can feed it... in reference to the 4x slot at the bottom.

 

[TickleMyElmo]

I know it's in the manual, the thing is I didn't understand what x16, x8, x4 all meant. I have no idea what lanes are either.

 

[EarthDog]

Maybe this will help.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/pci-express1.htm

 

[trents]

I know it's in the manual, the thing is I didn't understand what x16, x8, x4 all meant. I have no idea what lanes are either.

Lanes in electronics are like lanes on a freeway. The more lanes the freeway has the easier it will allow heavy traffic to proceed without bottlenecking. So the more the better if traffic isn't heavy enough to create much congestion then doubling the number of lanes will not help much.