PCI-e Lanes - How many do I have?

[fcon]

I have an AMD FX-8350 and a MB with the A78 chipset.

I've been finding it quite confusing to find out how many lanes I have. I contacted AMD and they were no help.

I've been browsing their website and still no luck.

I want to install a wireless network adapter but don't want my graphics card to get reduced to x8 just because of my need for Wifi.

I was browsing the internet and found this place which seems to be quite good for getting help with building PCs.

Please help.

 

A summary, if you think this too long:

I have an AMD FX-8350 and an A78 MB, contacted AMD, no help, so please help.

[DocSwag]

I don't think it matters if your gpu gets reduced to x8 though. That's still more than enough

[kitsune1324]

1 minute ago, DocSwag said:

I don't think it matters if your gpu gets reduced to x8 though. That's still more than enough

I think it's maybe like a 1% difference? I'm currently running two 970's running in a 8x by 8x config on a 6700k which only has 20 lanes, you can make up the percentage loss just by overclocking the cards.

[DocSwag]

2 minutes ago, kitsune1324 said:

I think it's maybe like a 1% difference? I'm currently running two 970's running in a 8x by 8x config on a 6700k which only has 20 lanes, you can make up the percentage loss just by overclocking the cards.

Yeah the difference is like 1-2%, aka nobody will notice.

[fcon]

2 minutes ago, kitsune1324 said:

I think it's maybe like a 1% difference? I'm currently running two 970's running in a 8x by 8x config on a 6700k which only has 20 lanes, you can make up the percentage loss just by overclocking the cards.

I'm quite new to PC building, don't really know how to overclock.

[Lurick]

I think even if you're running a 1080Ti in x8 mode on PCIe 2.0, you won't notice a difference.

Most A78 boards have PCIe 3.0 slots on them, so you won't notice a difference at all.

[kitsune1324]

Just now, fcon said:

I'm quite new to PC building, don't really know how to overclock.

It's really not difficult with the newer generation gpu's. Correct me if I'm wrong but a lot of them can kinda overclock themselves.

[Damascus]

You are safe, read the mono mnula for where to put the wifi cry so it doesn't interfere with the gpu

 

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/230693-how-many-pci-lanes-does-fx-8350-have/

[mariushm]

The A78 chipset is for motherboards with socket FM2+ socket.

You can't put a FX-8350 (socket AM3+) on such a motherboard, so either you don't have a FX-8350 or you don't have a motherboard with the A78 chipset.

 

If you have a socket AM3+ and a FX-8350, then you pretty much have only PCI-E v2.0 lanes, which are about half as fast as PCI-E v3.0 lanes.

How they're arranged depends on the chipset:

 

970: One physical PCIe 2.0 ×16 slot, one PCIe 2.0 ×4 slot and two PCIe 2.0 ×1 slots, the chipset provides a total of 22 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbridge

980G (same as 880G) : One physical PCIe 2.0 ×16 slot, one PCIe 2.0 ×4 slot and two PCIe 2.0 ×1 slots, the chipset provides a total of 22 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbrid

990X : One physical PCIe 2.0×16 slot or two physical PCIe 2.0×16 slots @ ×8, one PCIe 2.0×4 slot and two PCIe 2.0×1 slots, the chipset provides a total of 22 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbridge

990FX : Four physical PCIe 2.0 ×16 slots @ x8 electrical which can be combined to create two PCIe 2.0×16 slots @ x16 electrical, one PCIe 2.0×4 slot and two PCIe 2.0×1 slots, the chipset provides a total of 38 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbridge

 

Most likely, if you put two cards, they'll work in SLI or Crossfire in pci-e x16 (x8 electrical) v2.0, which is pretty much like running each card at pci-e 3.0 x4.

The latest generation cards (Polaris and Pascal) will have some noticeable performance degradation but not very significant loss of performance. You'll see the difference in benchmarks, like a few percent less when running a single card in pci-e 2.0 x8.

 

If you have a motherboard based on A78 chipset, then you'll have a FM2+ processor not FX-8350, and at least the Kaveri and Carrizo series of processors have native support for pci-e v3.0, but I think most are limited to a pci-e v3.0 x8 so you may get a pci-e x16 slot on motherboard but electrically it's x8.

 

The A78 chipset can offer an additional x16 worth of pci-e v2.0 lanes ... i'm too lazy to really google it but I think that's right.

 

[fcon]

12 minutes ago, mariushm said:

The A78 chipset is for motherboards with socket FM2+ socket.

You can't put a FX-8350 (socket AM3+) on such a motherboard, so either you don't have a FX-8350 or you don't have a motherboard with the A78 chipset.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/C2mxFT/asus-m5a78l-m-plususb3-micro-atx-am3-motherboard-m5a78l-m-plususb3 This is the part. Apparently A78 and AM3+.

[mariushm]

Just now, fcon said:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/C2mxFT/asus-m5a78l-m-plususb3-micro-atx-am3-motherboard-m5a78l-m-plususb3 This is the part. Apparently A78 and AM3+.

No.

 

Look here: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/M5A78LMUSB3/specifications/

 

The motherboard uses the AMD 760G northbridge (also named 780L by some)  paired with the SB710 southbridge.

 

AMD 760G northbridge does this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_700_chipset_series#760G

 

760G

Codenamed RS780L

Single AMD processor configuration

One physical PCIe 2.0 x16 slot and one PCIe 2.0 x4 slot, the chipset provides a total of 20 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 1.1 for A-Link Express II solely in the Northbridge

Integrated graphics: Radeon HD 3000

GPU 350 MHz, memory shared DDR3 533 MHz, power consumption 5.1-6.1 W

ATI PowerPlay technology

ATI Hybrid Graphics

55 nm CMOS fabrication process manufactured by TSMC

HyperTransport 3.0 and PCI Express 2.0

Value DirectX 10.0 IGP segment

 

SB710

• All features from SB700
• Super I/O
• Advanced Clock Calibration for enhanced CPU overclocking
  • Direct communication channel composed of six data pins which were previously reserved between the CPU and the southbridge
  • Advanced Clock Calibration (Option available with AMD OverDrive software 2.1.1 and later)

SB700

• Support up to 6 SATA 3.0 Gbit/s hard disk drives, with RAID 0, 1, 10 support
• eSATA support
• 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
• Support up to 14 USB ports (12 USB 2.0 and 2 USB 1.1)
• I/O acceleration technologies
• Consumer Infrared receiver/transmitter port compatible with IrDA standards^[32]
• DASH 1.0 support

 

 

[fcon]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

No.

 

Look here: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/M5A78LMUSB3/specifications/

 

The motherboard uses the AMD 760G northbridge (also named 780L by some)  paired with the SB710 southbridge.

 

AMD 760G northbridge does this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_700_chipset_series#760G

 

760G

Codenamed RS780L

Single AMD processor configuration

One physical PCIe 2.0 x16 slot and one PCIe 2.0 x4 slot, the chipset provides a total of 20 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 1.1 for A-Link Express II solely in the Northbridge

 

Thanks.

I wonder why PCPP said A78.