Processor PCIe Lane Support

[Shadskular]

My friend and I were planning on upgrading to an i5-4690K. On the spec sheet, it says it only has 16 PCIe lanes. Since a single GPU uses a 16x slot, (We are planning on using a G1 GTX 970) will this mean it won't be able to handle two or more in SLI?

 

Any CPU recommendations would be very much appreciated as well.

 

Thanks,

Shadskular

[EarthboundHero]

It can handle 2 in SLI. SLI cards need at least 1 8X lane per card.

[Brandogg255]

it can handle two GTX 970 but they run at 8 lanes, this doesn't affect performance though

[Shadskular]

Thanks! This really helped me out a lot!

 

Thanks,

Shadskular

[EcoBoost]

My friend and I were planning on upgrading to an i5-4690K. On the spec sheet, it says it only has 16 PCIe lanes. Since a single GPU uses a 16x slot, (We are planning on using a G1 GTX 970) will this mean it won't be able to handle two or more in SLI?

It will run two of them each at PCIe 3.0 x8. GeForce cards in SLI require at least an 8x link regardless of the PCI-Express generation, but since it's PCIe 3.0, 8x will be the same bandwidth as PCIe 2.0 16x, which is plenty of bandwidth for a 970.

[xBlizzDevious]

Thanks! This really helped me out a lot!

 

Thanks,

Shadskular

 

To clarify a little: a PCIe card (of any sort, not just a graphics card) will have a maximum specification - the physical size of the connector and the number of pins on it. However, you can take any PCIe card of any specification and throw it in any slot of any specification. You can, if you wish, throw a 16x card (like a graphics card) into a 1x slot and it will just work at 1x speeds (really, REALLY not a good idea with a GPU).

 

You may have to remove the nib in the slot to physically fit a longer card in, but some boards have that done by default.

[Aniallation]

 You can, if you wish, throw a 16x card (like a graphics card) into a 1x slot and it will just work at 1x speeds (really, REALLY not a good idea with a GPU).

I still don't understand why they make low-end cards x16 physically. Of course with a high-end GPU you won't want it in an X1 slot but with something like a GT 720 are you really going to notice the difference between having it a 16x or 1x link? There were some a while ago like this one, but the idea seems to have been ditched http://www.club-3d.com/index.php/products/reader.en/product/geforce-gt-520-pci-express-x1-edition.html

[xBlizzDevious]

I still don't understand why they make low-end cards x16 physically. Of course with a high-end GPU you won't want it in an X1 slot but with something like a GT 720 are you really going to notice the difference between having it a 16x or 1x link? There were some a while ago like this one, but the idea seems to have been ditched http://www.club-3d.com/index.php/products/reader.en/product/geforce-gt-520-pci-express-x1-edition.html

 

Oh wow... The lowest I'd seen was an 8x GPU. Haha! With PCIe 3.0, a 4x slot should be enough for a high-end GPU so I guess a 1x slot wouldn't be too terrible. As long as there's no gaming going on, anyway.

[Opcode]

The two cards will run at x8 speeds which will be fine without any performance hit. The only time this becomes a problem is when you're doing massive multiple GPU configurations (e.g. quad SLI or quad Crossfire).

[Shadskular]

Thanks for all the replies!

 

One more question though...

 

I was a a friends place who has a custom PC, and he plugged his monitor straight into the MOBO. When we plugged it into his GPU (an Asus Strix card, I don't know the exact model) it would display with a black gap between the actual edge of the screen and the part that was displaying. This happened even with the drivers installed. Does this happen all the time?

 

Thanks,

Shadskular

[Opcode]

Thanks for all the replies!

 

One more question though...

 

I was a a friends place who has a custom PC, and he plugged his monitor straight into the MOBO. When we plugged it into his GPU (an Asus Strix card, I don't know the exact model) it would display with a black gap between the actual edge of the screen and the part that was displaying. This happened even with the drivers installed. Does this happen all the time?

 

Thanks,

Shadskular

Does it go away after calibrating the display?

[xBlizzDevious]

Thanks for all the replies!

 

One more question though...

 

I was a a friends place who has a custom PC, and he plugged his monitor straight into the MOBO. When we plugged it into his GPU (an Asus Strix card, I don't know the exact model) it would display with a black gap between the actual edge of the screen and the part that was displaying. This happened even with the drivers installed. Does this happen all the time?

 

Thanks,

Shadskular

 

I'm guessing that it's scaling screwing things up. Go into the driver control panel (CCC or Nvidia Control Panel), navigate to the scaling options for your monitors and change the setting until the picture fits the whole screen. It's a common problem with HDMI.