Question about lanes

[JoostinOnline]

I've done some searching about PCIe lanes, but I'm still somewhat confused.  I have a 4790k, which according to Intel, supports up to 16 PCIe lanes.  How much does that limit me to?  For example, if I wanted to use SLI or Crossfire, would 16 lanes bottleneck me?  I don't plan on doing that, but I still want to know my limitations.

[Oshino Shinobu]

It would not. We're still a way off fully utilising PCIe 3.0 8x with any single card, or PCIe 2.0 8x for that matter. 

[Godlygamer23]

No. With sixteen lanes, that would give each card eight lanes to play with, and that's plenty, even using PCIe 2.0. 

[The Sloth]

you should be good 

[RadiatingLight]

1 minute ago, Godlygamer23 said:

No. With sixteen lanes, that would give each card eight lanes to play with, and that's plenty, even using PCIe 2.0. 

Really?

The razer core only has 4 Lanes, and i was under the impression that 4 lanes of PCI-e 3.0 was a slight bottleneck with higher-end GPUs

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, RadiatingLight said:

Really?

The razer core only has 4 Lanes, and i was under the impression that 4 lanes of PCI-e 3.0 was a slight bottleneck with higher-end GPUs

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/#1080pResults

 

Doesn't show PCIe x4 3.0, but it does have PCIe 2.0 x8 and x16.

[RadiatingLight]

1 minute ago, Godlygamer23 said:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/#1080pResults

 

Doesn't show PCIe x4 3.0, but it does have PCIe 2.0 x8 and x16.

Oh wow. noice

[JoostinOnline]

Thanks guys (and gals), I appreciate the info!

[mariushm]

PCI-E 3.0 lanes have transfer speeds of around 980 MB/s in both directions.  PCI-E 2.0 lanes are only 500 MB/s

 

So you get about the same maximum bandwidth with half the number of lanes with pci-e v3.0, compared to pci-e v2.0

 

So basically a pci-e 3.0 x4 is more or less the same as a pci-e 2.0 x8 when it comes to bulk speed.

[JoostinOnline]

Lol, now I'm confused again.  How do the slots transfer into lanes?

 

Btw, this is the motherboard I have: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130779

[Godlygamer23]

13 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Lol, now I'm confused again.  How do the slots transfer into lanes?

 

Btw, this is the motherboard I have: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130779

Are you asking about how many lanes your PCIe slots have or are you asking about the technical side of things?

[JoostinOnline]

2 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Are you asking about how many lanes your PCIe slots have or are you asking about the technical side of things?

To sum up: Will the 16 lane limitation on my CPU bottleneck a GPU configuration anytime in the near future?

[Godlygamer23]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

To sum up: Will the 16 lane limitation on my CPU bottleneck a GPU configuration anytime in the near future?

It could with the next generation of video cards if you plan to do a Crossfire configuration. Bear in mind that the motherboard does not support SLI....Only Crossfire. 

[JoostinOnline]

1 minute ago, Godlygamer23 said:

It could with the next generation of video cards if you plan to do a Crossfire configuration. Bear in mind that the motherboard does not support SLI....Only Crossfire. 

Thanks man.  I'll mark it as solved.  I don't ever plan on doing a SLI/Crossfire setup (which is why I got a Crossfire board when I use NVIDIA cards), so that wasn't an issue.  I just wanted to know my limitations.  I'll need to get a new graphics card.  While gaming wasn't the reason for my CPU upgrade, I was a little disappointed that it made zero difference in my FPS.  I'm still using a GTX 750 Ti.

[Godlygamer23]

25 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Thanks man.  I'll mark it as solved.  I don't ever plan on doing a SLI/Crossfire setup (which is why I got a Crossfire board when I use NVIDIA cards), so that wasn't an issue.  I just wanted to know my limitations.  I'll need to get a new graphics card.  While gaming wasn't the reason for my CPU upgrade, I was a little disappointed that it made zero difference in my FPS.  I'm still using a GTX 750 Ti.

What games were you testing with? 

[JoostinOnline]

1 hour ago, Godlygamer23 said:

What games were you testing with? 

Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Borderlands 2.  Those are the only games I own that have frame dips..Everything else was running at 60fps regularly.  Before my upgrade I had an i3-4170.

[Godlygamer23]

51 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Borderlands 2.  Those are the only games I own that have frame dips..Everything else was running at 60fps regularly.  Before my upgrade I had an i3-4170.

I'm going to assume it's just that the video card was already pushed to 100% before and no extra performance could be squeezed out from the CPU side. 

[JoostinOnline]

4 hours ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I'm going to assume it's just that the video card was already pushed to 100% before and no extra performance could be squeezed out from the CPU side. 

That's what I figured.