The i7-960 and PCI-e lanes

[Spartaton]

I'm re-purposing my old pc which has an i7-960 in it. Since the pc is so old I might have to add some expansion cards if I want more modern functionality (such as usb 3.0). I couldn't find any info on how the i7-960 deals with PCI-e lanes myself so I was wondering if anyone here knew. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

There are lots of lanes from the cpu, so you can run a gpu + usb 3 + raid card just fine. 

 

You have 36 lanes per cpu in 1366

 

Id probably consider upgrading to a newer cpu if you can instead of putting money in a old platform.

[MMKing]

*edit*

 

The information was incorrect.

[Glenwing]

6 minutes ago, Spartaton said:

I'm re-purposing my old pc which has an i7-960 in it. Since the pc is so old I might have to add some expansion cards if I want more modern functionality (such as usb 3.0). I couldn't find any info on how the i7-960 deals with PCI-e lanes myself so I was wondering if anyone here knew. 

In that generation, the PCIe lanes are still provided by the Northbridge chipset, not the CPU. You'll need to look up the capabilities of the X58 chipset.

[DunePilot]

You can also get really good performance by upgrading to a X5650, or X5675 if you want to consider upgrading. Shouldn't cost more than about $100 and you'll get about a 70% performance increase. It should be able to handle any of the new GPUs with limited bottlenecking though if you are planning on upgrading to 1080 SLI or something then you might want to upgrade the whole system.

[SnowyMus]

1 hour ago, Spartaton said:

I'm re-purposing my old pc which has an i7-960 in it. Since the pc is so old I might have to add some expansion cards if I want more modern functionality (such as usb 3.0). I couldn't find any info on how the i7-960 deals with PCI-e lanes myself so I was wondering if anyone here knew. 

As mentioned before, prior to Sandy Bridge, the northbridge (a chipset on the board rather than a functionality of the CPU) was responsible for the PCIe lanes on Intel CPUs. AMD's 9-series chipsets also operate in this fashion, if you were wondering. The X58 chipset provides up to 36 lanes for your upgrading pleasure, though your motherboard manual will usually specify exactly how your lanes are divided among the slots.

 

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/chipsets/workstation-chipsets/workstation-chipset-x58.html

 

Note that it's PCIe 2.0, so keep this in mind when selecting an expansion card to insert. While there's nothing stopping you from plugging a PCIe 3.0 card into a PCIe 2.0 slot, you may get reduced performance due to the slower interface.

[Spartaton]

3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There are lots of lanes from the cpu, so you can run a gpu + usb 3 + raid card just fine. 

 

You have 36 lanes per cpu in 1366

 

Id probably consider upgrading to a newer cpu if you can instead of putting money in a old platform.

Thanks.

I've already built my new PC, I'm just looking into sprucing up the old system to potentially sell it since the i7-960 still seems like a capable CPU.

3 hours ago, Glenwing said:

In that generation, the PCIe lanes are still provided by the Northbridge chipset, not the CPU. You'll need to look up the capabilities of the X58 chipset.

You learn something new everyday.

3 hours ago, DunePilot said:

You can also get really good performance by upgrading to a X5650, or X5675 if you want to consider upgrading. Shouldn't cost more than about $100 and you'll get about a 70% performance increase. It should be able to handle any of the new GPUs with limited bottlenecking though if you are planning on upgrading to 1080 SLI or something then you might want to upgrade the whole system.

I'll keep that in mind.

2 hours ago, Kavawuvi said:

As mentioned before, prior to Sandy Bridge, the northbridge (a chipset on the board rather than a functionality of the CPU) was responsible for the PCIe lanes on Intel CPUs. AMD's 9-series chipsets also operate in this fashion, if you were wondering. The X58 chipset provides up to 36 lanes for your upgrading pleasure, though your motherboard manual will usually specify exactly how your lanes are divided among the slots.

 

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/chipsets/workstation-chipsets/workstation-chipset-x58.html

 

Note that it's PCIe 2.0, so keep this in mind when selecting an expansion card to insert. While there's nothing stopping you from plugging a PCIe 3.0 card into a PCIe 2.0 slot, you may get reduced performance due to the slower interface.

I know it's PCIe 2.0. From what I've looked up it seems like it doesn't make that much of a practice difference.