Name: shubequential Date: December 26, 2007 at 13:28:45 Pacific Subject: GPUs & PCI Express Lanes
Comment:
I am interested in SLI and Crossfire cards. I've been reading up on new mobos, and I see that some with dual PCI-E x16 say (x8 electrical). While others read that they are both x16 and x16 electrical- if I am not mistaken. What does this mean?
I going to be building a new system soon, my computer has aged enough that my AGP 8x slot is no longer cool.
I am sort of an AMD fanboy- but even I can realize how much the Core 2 series is killing AMD. I am going to do a build this summer with a budget of $1000. That includes- mobo, CPU, and GPU, I'd like for that to include cost of hard drives, and power supply, but I may have to keep those expenses on a separate sheet of paper so I don't hate myself too much!
I'd like to run two upper range GPU's in SLI or Crossfire. My goal is a system that runs 40-60fps on Crysis.
Prices willing, without compromising on gfx cards, I would like to throw in a Core 2 qx6850 for the system. However, if prices aren't so friendly, I've recently been tempted by my AMD roots to go for a dual CPU Barcelona core Opteron system under the nforce Professional chipset. That would give me 8 cores instead of Intels 4, and it would be the only thing that even closely rivals a dual Xeon Clovertown setup, which I couldn't even dream of upgrading to for at least a few years. So, the Opteron system paired with two 8800GTs should be attainable by June I would think. But all of the boards I have seen have this 8x electrical thing, is that going to effect speed for SLI?
Athlon XP 3200 Barton Core Geforce 6800GT O/C 1GB PC3200 Windows XP Professional SP2 BenQ 24" FP241W LCD
I think most folks here will agree that Crossfire & SLi configs are a huge waste of money. Just get one GOOD card, not two mediocre cards hoping that they will perform as well. And there's little need for a quad-core CPU right now, let alone two of them.
It doesn't appear that Crysis actually takes advantage of the quad anyway, at least not the way you would think:
"...my first impression was that Crysis was utilizing all four cores - which is true. Crysis is passing instructions to all four cores but not maximizing their ability to handle instructions concurrently. All four cores look busy in the graph but the reality of it is that they are basically operating as a single-core and taking turns. In it's current state Crysis does not take full advantage of multi-core processing."
"Good luck" playing Crysis at full settings with only 1k budget. If here with $2.4k of graphics card alone cant play at 40fps i dunno how $1k build will play @ 40-60fps unless playing at very low resolution and even still i may doubt it! Id set your hopes at more Medium @ 40fps Anyhow Id buy the C2D Q6600 any day. Brilliantly cheap, super over-clocker and about $40 more than dual core processors cant go wrong! Then id probably go with a single 8800gt considering you don't have enough money for anything really more considering a GTX at about $700. Go for 2gb of ram no need for anything extra fast or special Everyone seems to be getting G.skill 2gb kits somewhere pretty cheaply nowadays. Although i brought my RAM of ebay for $128 for 4gb so $32 a gb Nothing special but it works and achieves the clocks i want, remember keep it 1:1 fsb:ram ratio :) Motherboard you cant really beat a Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI and its Sli compatiable for when you get extra cash! PSU go for: Tagan TG500-U25 500W ATX2.0 Dual Engine Silent SLi Sli compliant for future upgrades and full of power for all your components! Hard drives just go for what size you want id say 500gb drives are reasonably cheap these days and even the 1tb drives are becoming cheaper!
C2D-E6600ES-8x425-@3.4ghz 1:1 Ram : CPU 2gb Elipedia @ 850mhz EVGA 680i BFG8800GTS-OC 320mb @630-2010 680w Thermaltake Purepower 2 x 250gb Sata2 Vista Home Premium32
Just glanced at the above responses and didn't notice an explanation for the 8x vs. 16x.
Think of a freeway with 40 traffic lanes. If you dedicated 16 (8 + 8)of those lanes for truck traffic and the speed limit was driven constantly you could allow a set number of trucks to pass any particular point in a given time. Now double the amount of lanes dedicated to trucks 16 + 16). Now twice as many trucks can pass.
All this assumes that the trucks are following one another at close intervals. If there aren't enough trucks to fill up all the lanes then the 16 + 16 is overkill. Conversly if you don't have enough total lanes available (chipset limitation 8 + 8) to dedicate 32 just to trucks, then you need to cut back. PCIe is very flexable. Pretty much any number of lanes can be dedicated to a PCIe slot. There are MBoards with 1x, 4x, 8x, 16x slots.
Hmmm, I am beginning to feel like I don't want to play Crysis anymore!
It's sort of a bummer to hear technology isn't up to par with the software like it used to be. I spent $800 for the GPU, CPU, Mobo and Memory for the system I have now- going on near 3 years ago, and it plays CS:Source at full settings, at 1920x1200 resolution- a game that was newer than my hardware at the time it came out.
I don't want to drop a grand, only to have average performance on a game that is the benchmark for future releases.
LOL, however- with inflation on such a rapid rise, waiting out may not do me much good! 2 or 3 years from now I may pay the same for the same hardware if the US economy takes a mega plunge.
I appreciate the input guys, but I have to say I am only being encouraged to save my money for a rainy day. My current system, is generally tolerable, I've just missed out on video encoding, HD quality movies, and some of the new games- but I think wasting my cash would be more depressing than not having those capabilities.
Athlon XP 3200 Barton Core Geforce 6800GT O/C 1GB PC3200 Windows XP Professional SP2 BenQ 24" FP241W LCD
Thanks OTheHill, if I am hearing your correctly, even though the slots are fitting x16 cards, they only have the throughput of x8 cards if two are being used simultaneously? Are modern cards, like the 8800 series bottlenecked by x8 bandwidth?
Athlon XP 3200 Barton Core Geforce 6800GT O/C 1GB PC3200 Windows XP Professional SP2 BenQ 24" FP241W LCD
Oh, okay- but am I totally off? Is the 8800GT an x8 SLi card or x16 card? The bottleneck reference was in regards to if the 8800GT is a x16 wouldn't it be bottlenecked by an x8 SLi motherboard?
Athlon XP 3200 Barton Core Geforce 6800GT O/C 1GB PC3200 Windows XP Professional SP2 BenQ 24" FP241W LCD
I would say that your are correct. I really am not sure about that though. Could be the thruput of an 8x slot is enough to handle the card. Guess you would need to do the math.
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