Maximus 8 Hero PCIE slot broken/questions.

[BlueNostromo]

My friend recently built a system without a graphics card planning to add one in later. Anyway, I sold him a 9800GTX+. It won't work on his top PCIE slot, but will on the second one. I searched his motherboard online and found that his top two slots are directly connected to the CPU, but all the others are connected to the PCH. What exactly is the PCH? Also with the PCH, can you run PCIE lanes than your CPU has? Lets say I am using my two 970's to game which would use all of my PCIE lanes on my CPU, could I also have a wifi PCIE card running off one of my PCH slots?

Do you guys think he should get the board replaced too? He was going to get an R9 390 or GTX 970 and use the 9800GTX+ as a physX card.

 

[Woomack]

This is probably because old cards are not always working in PCIE 3.0 mode and board can force it on 1st slot. If you put it into other slots then it usually starts as 1.0/2.0. It depends from many things but generally it's motherboard design. The same you can have problems with old PCIE AMD cards in any PCIE 3.0 slots. Can try forcing PCIE mode in BIOS but I'm not sure if it will help. On new cards I had no issues with this motherboard.
Skylake has divided PCIE lanes. Some are in CPU and some are in motherboard's chipset. From the user's point of view all are the same so all devices should work the same but other controllers are managing them. Maybe that's why on PCH lanes old cards are visible.

9800GTX is really old and slow card. It's useless nowadays and can only slow down applications. I don't think it will work as dedicated physx card if AMD will be main card. At least nvidia was locking that so it's not guaranteed. Other thing is that barely any games are using physx now. Most new games have CPU based physics calculations or no physics at all ( just effects which look like physics ).

 

[ShrimpBrime]

He was going to get an R9 390 or GTX 970 and use the 9800GTX+ as a physX card.

If he gets the GTX-970 he won't need a dedicated physics card. If he want's a dedicated Physx card, he should looking into a GTX750 ti.. It'll be more than plenty and would make for a decent back up card too!

 

[BlueNostromo]

There are programs/mods that will allow hybrid physx to run with an AMD main card. You can also set which processor you want to run any PhysX. (CPU, GPU1, GPU2, or auto). I would think having that 9800gtx+ would help at least a little! Also being a backup card of itself. We will the top slot when he buys a new card.

To my other question. I my board had a PCH, could I use more pcie devices than my cpu has lanes for?

 

[EarthDog]

Your board has a PCH... they all do. The limit comes from the CPU and the amount of PCIe lanes it has. This PCH, I believe has 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes.

 

[BlueNostromo]

Lol, sorry. I just had no clue what I was looking at tbh. I believe its all cleared up though!