GTX590 run on 8x

[Madbaron]

Not that i'm going to try this, but i wondering what would happen if the GTX590 was run on 8x PCIe lane what performance would be given compared with a 16x PCIe. Considering that normally a graphics card is best run on a 16x PCIe slot but with a number of reviews saying there is a 0.001% performance loss run on 8x.

The question is, if your running a Two Gpu card like the GTX590 would you HAVE to run it on 16x PCIe lane to get the best usage?

 

[Pat123]

As far as i'm aware the card would run but the x8 would bottleneck the memory as the card has 3GB, i may be completely wrong mind lol. You would still get decent performance, but if you can afford two 590's im guessing you would be able to afford a x16x16 board.

 

[Madbaron]

Well from what i've seen on the X58 there are a few 16x/16x boards however if you had another card like a wireless card or a Revodrive that will split it to 8x, which is where the question i had originated.

 

[o0bananaman0o]

linus did a test with a 6990:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=vfXALgE7mVM

8x saw a negligable drop, 4x was significant

I dont know much about hardware architecture but why would it matter, the dvi out is on the card, so why would it need to send the frame buffer to the cpu? it would just need to send the address of the buffer?

 

[Madbaron]

Maybe i wasn't clear enough, i already knew about the difference between single GPU solutions when using both 8x and 16x however i was wondering what the difference was when running Dual GPU solutions like the GTX590. Because a single GPU needs at least a 8x lane to function properly i was wanting to know if using a dual card would you have HAVE to use a 16x lane get both GPU's functioning at full capacity or would it bottleneck the performance.

Single GPU - At least 8x, but preferred 16x

Dual GPU - ?

 

[Pat123]

Wouldn't be massive, but at the larger resolutions i think it would make more of a difference as more memory is needed.

 

[o0bananaman0o]

6990 is dual

 

[Madbaron]

Ahh my mistake, Well that solves that query then

Thankyou

 

[KING_OF_SAND]

If you run a 590 in a 8x slot both GPUs will be running at x4. just like a 590 in a x16 they will both run at x8.

 

[Madbaron]

Ahh that explains it a little better, i'm such an idiot lol Thanks

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

I think you'd still get about the same performance even if you ran it in such a thing as a 0.1x lane

 

[KING_OF_SAND]

Fodr Kreatr is right, there is no performance hit (in video games). benchmarking you will notice it a little, not much to change the score but enough to notice.