I recently brought a wireless card and the only available slot is my 2nd pci-e 2.0 port. I have a gigabyte ep45-ds3 motherboard and my graphics card is a hd7870. I think that the use of the wireless card in this port is stopping my primary pci-e port from running in x16 (gpuz shows x8). I would have assumed this would have only been the case if there was crossfire running.
Can anyone explain this to me? Also is this likely to impact the speed of the gpu much?
Thanks
Is the model of the mobo longer or more specific because the one that came up which I went to their site had 2 pci-e x16 and 2 pci-e x1?
That's right, but my other pci-e 1x slots are in use (sound card) and covered by the gpu
It looks like it has to do with the chipset. The motherboard only supports x16 pci-e lanes. The total is 16 with no cards in. You add the sound card and wireless leaving you with x14 lanes. Thats why the GPU is running with only x8 lanes.
http://ark.intel.com/products/35133/Intel-82P45-Memory-Controller-Hub
yes thats probably the issue, its a socket 775 board, but indeed the mobo probably supports pci-e X16 but dual X8 so if you put a card in the second pci-e X8 slot both slots will run at x8.
But performance wise this should not be an issue, because most gpu´s never ultilize the full bandwith of pci-e 2.0 X8 at all.
Thanks, that's what i was thinking I just wanted to be sure that it shouldn't impact performance too much.. I mean my CPU is probably the biggest bottleneck anyway.
Cheers
yeah thats for sure, a upgrade someday would not be a bad idea. ☺