• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

advise on motherboard that will support 3 9800GT cards

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

ngtw16a

New Member
Joined
Dec 20, 2024
Greetings all. Longtime listener first time poster :)

Many years ago [in a quadrant far far away] someone donated a XPS 630i [which is limited to 18 PCIe 2.0 lanes 8,8,1,1] system to me.
I am STILL using it with two Geforce 9800 GT cards (PCIe 2.0 using 8 lanes each)

Now it is time to finally upgrade this beast. I am a FS9 sim gamer--looking to run SIX monitors (currently running 4 with all the hardware [yoke, pedals, etc]
...so I'm looking to add a third 9800GT card to the mix.

My issue is...these cards require 16 PCIe2.0 lanes (or a min of 8 as I'm using them now)....so I'm looking for a mobo that handle 40 lines min
(16,16,8)...as I figure monitors 5 and 6 wont have heavy loads on them like the others with dynamic scenery etc. I'll use them for things like the radio stack, etc.

I dont really want to replace everything and spend thousands, so I figured an older board should work, but I cant find anything that supports
enough lanes. Running these cards at only 50% thruput I assume is a bottleneck..but not sure how much. I know Flight sim is a CPU hog,
so it maybe more of a CPU bottleneck that the GPU's.

anyone...can anyone recommend a good mobo that can handle 3 of these cards AND do decent overclocking??
(or can point me to a site where I can search mobo's by lanes, etc. ) ??

I know about ATX BTX thing with the case, so turning the mobo may require new holes, that's ok...I love the case :) Figure finding a small enough cpu cooler
will be the biggest issue (once reason not to go with a 'new' design that will require much more cooling space).

Any thoughts????
 
Depending on pricing and availability, X99 and X299 chipset platforms could be options. These are old now and you're unlikely to find them new outside of undocumented Chinese boards, so you'll have to hunt for used ones from well known manufacturers.

On X99 you have Haswell-E and Broadwell-E CPU options. Watch out the lowest offerings in each range do not support all the lanes e.g. 5820k has 28 lanes, 5930k has 40 lanes. X299 gets you Skylake-X/Cascade Lake-X 7/8/10 "X" series CPUs. Again watch out for lanes on lower models. On X99, E5 v3 Xeons may also be an option but for gaming they're probably less useful due to lower clock.

I know this was posted in Intel mobo section, but if AMD isn't off the list then old gen Threadripper might be an option too although the cores sucked until later gens.
 
What he said ^^... but feels like it's time to upgrade gpus too if your game lets you.


EDIT: Also, that's a title from 2009, no? Does it work with modern Windows? You need to keep that in mind when buying hardware. Why not FS20/24?

As far as the bottleneck...those GPUs and the CPU will hold you back... what resolution do you sim/game at? The lower the res, the more the CPU is involved....
 
Last edited:
Thank you all and Merry Christmas. Think I will shop around for some mid-range dual gaming cards...then maybe I can get away with (8,8,8) lanes
or even (8,8,4) if they can do a decent job with 4 lanes of PCIe 3 or 4 (for the less difficult windows). and Yes FS9 is old and I will most likely upgrade
but the new ones take even more resources (something I cant handle at the moment)....so one step at a time. FS9 works ok in 'windowed' undocked mode,
but the code does NOT support multithreading so newer CPU's dont have much effect (other than raw speed and faster memory access)
 
FS9 problem is indeed fullscreen mode, and some seemed to get it working by pressing alt+enter whenever it hanged on a black screen and/or running compatibility mode WinXP SP2. On that note, how to get it working on Win10 (possibly Win11):

- Install original game
Download the FS9.1 Update.
- Install the update.
- Personally, at this point, I prefer to reboot.
- Download the FS9.1 NoCD.
- Install the FS9.1 NoCD.
- Reboot
- Download the 4Gb Patch - https://ntcore.com/4gb-patch/
- Install the 4Gb Patch (store the FS9.1 NoCD - backup somewhere safe, just in case ...)
- Double click the Desktop Icon.
- Set up FS9 to your specifications.
- Enjoy.
 
Thank you all and Merry Christmas. Think I will shop around for some mid-range dual gaming cards...then maybe I can get away with (8,8,8) lanes
or even (8,8,4) if they can do a decent job with 4 lanes of PCIe 3 or 4 (for the less difficult windows). and Yes FS9 is old and I will most likely upgrade
but the new ones take even more resources (something I cant handle at the moment)....so one step at a time. FS9 works ok in 'windowed' undocked mode,
but the code does NOT support multithreading so newer CPU's dont have much effect (other than raw speed and faster memory access)
Id move away from multiple gpus. They just aren't worth it versus one more powerful card. Less power use, etc..

In addition to raw speed, the IPC is higher on newer cpus too. So it's doing mkre each clock cycle too.
 
Id move away from multiple gpus. They just aren't worth it versus one more powerful card. Less power use, etc..

In addition to raw speed, the IPC is higher on newer cpus too. So it's doing mkre each clock cycle too.
I understand that Xfire / SLI isn't an option with more modern system, but I'm curious & unclear how the OP will run 6 monitors without more than one video card. Generally I only see up to 4 outputs on most cards.
 
I understand that Xfire / SLI isn't an option with more modern system, but I'm curious & unclear how the OP will run 6 monitors without more than one video card. Generally I only see up to 4 outputs on most cards.
Damnit. I forgot about that, lol.

Still, that doesn't change much. Get a halfway modern/worthwhile single graphics card to power the game, then a potato GPU to put images on the other screen. He has no choice, but he can avoid the 'sli penality' by getting a capable single card.

I understand budgets are limited, but, to me, it behooves users in positions like this to save for better hardware instead of nickel and diming themselves with obsolete hardware that really doesn't cut it.
 
Luckily it wont cost thousands to replace that setup. That is exactly what I would do. A GPU upgrade might help, but it would be held back soo much from the rest of the system that I don't even know if it would be worth it. Running that game on a fully loaded system with 3x 9800s is going to be like 700w+ at the wall for hours at a time I would think. Is it really worth it?
 
I don't think so. :)

But yeah, even a used GTX 1080 is going to be a better option. Any boards have two slots... just get an AMD card as the secondary/for the other monitors so the slot can be x4 (NV requires x8, IIRC).

EDIT: He can walk away with a modern AMD system and use the iGPU for that ancient game and a discrete potato (read cheap) card for the other monitors. If he wants to play modern titles though, that won't work. I still say a semi-modern discrete card and a potato secondary is a win with a reasonable price.
 
Back