What exactly does 3 slot wide gpu mean?

[Fat Cat11997]

For a pc im building, im getting a gpu which is "3 slots wide." Does this mean that my motherboard will require 4 pcie slots? Could any1 please give me an answer?

[aisle9]

A typical GPU (well, what used to be typical anyway) uses 2 of the PCI slots on the back of the machine. A 3-slot GPU is taller and will need 3 of those slots. Motherboard connections are all the same, it's just got a thicker cooler.

[Eigenvektor]

The card only needs one slot to be attached to. But it will block the space of two others because of how tall it is

 

This usually doesn't matter that much these days, because most people don't attach anything other than a GPU to their motherboard anyway

[RONOTHAN##]

It describes how thick the card is. 3 slots wide means that it takes up the space allocated for 3 PCIe cards. 

 

A card with 1 slot spacing: 

Spoiler

 

A card with 2 slot spacing:

Spoiler

 

A card with 4 slot spacing:

Spoiler

 

All of those cards use a single PCIe slot on the board, they just cover up various amounts of slots on the motherboard. 

[aisle9]

Just now, RONOTHAN## said:

A card with 4 slot spacing:

  Hide contents

How tiny must one's dong be to need a card that thick?

[Majorblast6]

2 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

How tiny must one's dong be to need a card that thick?

Usually Nowdays cards take up at least 2 slots. if we don't consider really specific models

[Fat Cat11997]

5 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

It describes how thick the card is. 3 slots wide means that it takes up the space allocated for 3 PCIe cards. 

 

 

 

Could this affect whether or not the gpu even fits? like if there's the primary slot that's the fastest and meant for the gpu, but then there's  a large space between that slot and the other 3 slots, would that mean any capictors in that band between the slots would get in the way of the motherboard causing the gpu to not fit?

[Eigenvektor]

2 minutes ago, Fat Cat11997 said:

Could this affect whether or not the gpu even fits? like if there's the primary slot that's the fastest and meant for the gpu, but then there's  a large space between that slot and the other 3 slots, would that mean any capictors in that band between the slots would get in the way of the motherboard causing the gpu to not fit?

The motherboard itself generally should not block the card in any way. But e.g. for a mini-ITX board the card would be larger than the board. The more common issue is the card not physically fitting into the case, but that's usually more an issue if the card is especially long, rather than thick.

[aisle9]

12 minutes ago, Majorblast6 said:

Usually Nowdays cards take up at least 2 slots. if we don't consider really specific models

That's shifting to 3 slots for midrange and higher-end cards. It's like NVIDIA and AMD (NVIDIA especially) just gave up on efficiency in the interest of making tiny peens have massive e-peens.

[Eigenvektor]

22 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

That's shifting to 3 slots for midrange and higher-end cards. It's like NVIDIA and AMD (NVIDIA especially) just gave up on efficiency in the interest of making tiny peens have massive e-peens.

Thickness of the card on its own has no influence on its efficiency. It just means bigger cooler, which means you can probably get away with a slower and thus quieter fan. Of course cards that pump out a lot of heat like the 4090 also require more area designated for keeping the card cool.

 

Not sure what you mean with Nvidia specifically, if I'm not mistaken their current cards use a lot less power than AMD for the same or better performance. So they are more efficient, not less.

[Blue4130]

40 minutes ago, Fat Cat11997 said:

Could this affect whether or not the gpu even fits? like if there's the primary slot that's the fastest and meant for the gpu, but then there's  a large space between that slot and the other 3 slots, would that mean any capictors in that band between the slots would get in the way of the motherboard causing the gpu to not fit?

No, The GPU cooler does not go lower than the slots and the components between slots should not be higher than the slot.

[starsmine]

4 hours ago, aisle9 said:

That's shifting to 3 slots for midrange and higher-end cards. It's like NVIDIA and AMD (NVIDIA especially) just gave up on efficiency in the interest of making tiny peens have massive e-peens.

Efficiency doesnt mean max power draw. 

10W. 10fps, 
100W 120FPS
500W 700FPS

Which card is more efficient?