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B450 mobo with 2 PCI-E x16 slots populated. Am I losing GPU performance?

Go to solution Solved by YoungBlade,

You shouldn't be losing any performance at all. The bottom 3 slots are run out of the chipset and use the chipset lanes to communicate with the CPU. For this reason, the top x16 slot is unaffected by putting cards in the lower slots.

 

Looking through the manual, the only place where you lose connectivity is that the bottom PCIe slot is disabled if you install a second M.2 drive into the lower M.2 slot. If you ever install a second M.2 SSD, and you still want to use the soundcard, you'll need to invest in a riser cable and run it from one of the x1 slots.

Hi All,

 

I have an MSI B450 Mortar Max.

With a slot layout like this:

  • 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slot (PCI_E1)
    • Supports x16 speed with 1st, 2nd and 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen™ processors
    • Supports x8 speed with Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics and 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Graphics processors
    • Supports x4 speed with AMD® Athlon™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics Processors
  • 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (PCI_E4, supports x4 mode)1
  • 2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 slots2
  1. PCI_E4 slot will be unavailable when an M.2 SSD is installed in the M2_2 slot.
  2. PCI_E2 slot will be unavailable when an expansion card is installed in the PCI_E3 slot.

It looks like this:

image.png.3f7f59c5736759cd5930eeaeb1e50d76.png

 

And I have my GPU in that top X16 slot.

Currently 1080Ti, soon 3070Ti. Both 3 slots wide.

 

And I have my Sound Blaster PCI-E X1 sound card in the 4th slot. Because that's the only 1 left next to the huge GPU.

 

My question is, am I losing GPU performance because of the populated 4th slot?

(either with my current card or my next one)

 

The CPU is an 5600X. And I have 1 M.2 drive in that top slot, above the GPU.

 

Thank you in advance!

 

 

 

 

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You shouldn't be losing any performance at all. The bottom 3 slots are run out of the chipset and use the chipset lanes to communicate with the CPU. For this reason, the top x16 slot is unaffected by putting cards in the lower slots.

 

Looking through the manual, the only place where you lose connectivity is that the bottom PCIe slot is disabled if you install a second M.2 drive into the lower M.2 slot. If you ever install a second M.2 SSD, and you still want to use the soundcard, you'll need to invest in a riser cable and run it from one of the x1 slots.

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omg, thank you sir!!

 

I'm in the middle of this 1080Ti to 3070Ti upgrade research and it scared me to death that I might have to spend extra to get rid of this bottleneck in some way...

Now I can go back to enjoying the idea of finally having ray tracing and dlss soon for the first time : )

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