Nvme & GPU bandwidths

[zinet]

Probably gonna have to update bios at this point. I'm seeing different options on "Tool".

[Kisai]

10 minutes ago, zinet said:

Probably gonna have to update bios at this point. I'm seeing different options on "Tool".

It might not be available if the GPU isn't an ASUS one, but that was pretty much direction I would be looking at, as many bios's have some way to prioritize the GPU when there's an iGPU or when multiple GPU's are present. It seems your problem is that It's not initializing the GPU because it believes there is another one present.

[zinet]

I plugged in the GPU on the first slot and went to bios "Tool" and the first slot is only occupied by the GPU. It booted 2 times in a row now.

[zinet]

Seems to be functioning now guys, kinda weird. I hope the bios update did some help with it. Thank you guys for assisting, stay safe.

[TuLong]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

You would need a different CPU on a different chipset. Non-workstation boards, from both Intel and AMD assign 16 lanes to the first x16 slot, and if ANYTHING is plugged into the second x16 slot, both slots become x8. There is nothing out there that doesn't do this.

 

You would need a threadripper or a xeon board not based on the desktop chipset:

For example the C264 is still the desktop chipset:

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/WS-C246-PRO/

 

 

where as the  C422 does what you're asking

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/WS-C422-PRO-SE/

 

If you're only dealing with m2 NVMe's, read the manual for which slot you can't use if the m2 is populated.

 

 

 

@kisai

It says something similar on my Rog strix b450 gaming, and i must admitt i felt a little cheated when i first found out. Like it has 3 PCIe x 16 slots, but not really. But this is the case with most motherboards you say ? But it allso depends on the CPU apparently. So is this because of actual physical limitations of lanes? Either on the chipset or CPU. Or can this potentially be fixed  with a chipset driver update and/or upgrading the CPU ? 

I got 2 m.2 drives installed now, which means my graphics card in the top slot only gets x8. And even tho people tell me that hardly has any implication in gaming it still buggs me. Most of all i do video editing in Adobe after effects which have been entirely CPU based more or less, but are in the prosess of moving more and more of the workload over on the GPU. But i suspect it has to do a lot of back and forth communication then, not like the typical gaming situation where it's just spewing out framed to the monitor. 

Anyways, sinc my work also requires lot's of fast storage i was thinking about getting the asus hyper m.2 x16 card V2. It wouldn't get the full 16x lanes in the 2 PCIe slot but at least the GPU would as far as i understand. So is that a sensible way to go? Or you simply have to get a threadripper to get that kinda performance ? 

[Kisai]

14 minutes ago, TuLong said:

@kisai

It says something similar on my Rog strix b450 gaming, and i must admitt i felt a little cheated when i first found out. Like it has 3 PCIe x 16 slots, but not really. But this is the case with most motherboards you say ? But it allso depends on the CPU apparently. So is this because of actual physical limitations of lanes? Either on the chipset or CPU. Or can this potentially be fixed  with a chipset driver update and/or upgrading the CPU ? 

I got 2 m.2 drives installed now, which means my graphics card in the top slot only gets x8. And even tho people tell me that hardly has any implication in gaming it still buggs me. Most of all i do video editing in Adobe after effects which have been entirely CPU based more or less, but are in the prosess of moving more and more of the workload over on the GPU. But i suspect it has to do a lot of back and forth communication then, not like the typical gaming situation where it's just spewing out framed to the monitor. 

Anyways, sinc my work also requires lot's of fast storage i was thinking about getting the asus hyper m.2 x16 card V2. It wouldn't get the full 16x lanes in the 2 PCIe slot but at least the GPU would as far as i understand. So is that a sensible way to go? Or you simply have to get a threadripper to get that kinda performance ? 

There is no current desktop MB for AMD or Intel that lets you have two 16x slots. The second and third slot will run at 8X or 4X. I discovered this myself on my Haswell system because I put my video capture card into the second PCIe slot, because it also requires two slot spaces and was like "what the hell, it does it to all of them"

 

At any rate, most people don't notice the drop from 16x to 8x because the CPU limitations are hit first. So on a PCIe 4.0 board with a PCIe 4.0 GPU, likely would be just fine in a 8x configuration with the m2 x16 card, but the m2 card would still only be given 8 lanes.

 

If you want 16 lanes on that card, you need to not have a GPU in the system or use a workstation board that gives each x16 slot 16x lanes itself. The problem with the Intel boards is that they typically only have 24 PCIe lanes for expansion, so there simply isn't 32 lanes to have in the first place, even when the iGPU is turned off. With the AMD systems, they typically expose only 24 lanes as well, and then everything else is on the remaining 4x lanes given to the chipset.

 

You would need a Threadripper to have 64 lanes, or a Xeon Platinum with 40 lanes. Note the Xeon still doesn't have the capacity for 3 cards, so you have to pay attention to what the configuration actually is. The Xeon W chips have 64, which is the space that Threadripper plays in.

 

So if you need a quick way to tell if a board might have the necessary lanes to have both a 16x gpu and a 16x m2 card, look for a MB that advertises that it has 64 PCIe lanes. The onboard M2 slots also use PCIe lanes (4 each) So the ultimate configuration might look like 16x gpu, 4x+4x+4x+4x (16x m2 card), 4x + 4x +4x, plus any PCI x1/x4 slots (ATX boards have space for 7 slots typically.)

 

Just to call out that 16 m2 card ... I believe the manual for it says that it only supports the two middle m2 slots if it's plugged into the PCIe2_16 or PCIe3_16 slots of such boards that operate them at 8x.

[TuLong]

@Kisai Thanks for the clarification! Might be better off getting a propper NAS then, instead of changing out the whole system..