Im tryin to find a mobo that doesnt drop to 8x and 8x when you sli or crossfire that shit and i see this or something similar a lot.

Two PCI Express 16X slots with 1x16 and 1x4 operations (PCI Express Bus SPEC V1.0a compliant; supports CrossFire Technology)


the "and" threw me off...should i interpret this as, "youre fucked if you actually use the crossfire"?

8/13/2007 9:48:16 PM

mine does 1x16 1x16 1x8 i believe. nforce 680i

8/13/2007 9:56:23 PM

AM2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130047
775 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131073

Those were earlier boards that had a limited amount of lanes. They wanted to make it possible to use the second slot for x4 devices (like sound cards). But as we all know, PCI-E sound cards are yet to really come.

8/13/2007 11:21:09 PM

I don't think today's consumer sound cards really need the bandwidth of pci-e. Once there are more computers that have them, then companies will start converting to 1x or 3x pci-e. It took the industry to convert from ISA to PCI a bit and some of the sound card manufacturers were still making ISA boards years after PCI was already out. I'd expect in 2-3 years that we'll see a lot more pci-e cards, but we'll first see HDTV tuners and the like before we will see soundcards.

8/15/2007 2:37:20 AM

I'd like to find a board that actually has 2 free PCI slots after using 2 of the PCIE 16x slots. Seems like every board I've looked at is laid out so that if you use 2 PCIE graphics cards you're almost guaranteed to block one or two of the PCI slots, leaving only one actually usable.

This is the only one I've been able to find:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813136035


[Edited on August 15, 2007 at 12:14 PM. Reason : ]

8/15/2007 12:07:59 PM

Well... usually when you use two gpu's that are two slots wide, you'd be left with just one slot. That kinda sucks when you want to add a sound card and something else, like an HDTV tuner card.

8/15/2007 12:28:01 PM

My exact problem. I guess if I'm considering putting two high-end graphics cards in, it's silly to bitch about having to buy a far-too-expensive motherboard.

Many times it's not simply lack of room, but inclusion of almost-never-used slots. Some boards have a 3rd or 4th PCIE 16x slot as well a PCIE 1x slot. I know some people might use 4 PCIE 16x slots (although most of those boards can run two at most at 16x...) but there's got to be more people who want to use 2 PCIE 16x slots and 2-3 PCI slots- particularly among gamer and media-enthusiasts.


[Edited on August 15, 2007 at 12:53 PM. Reason : ]

8/15/2007 12:50:08 PM