Quick Question on PCIe lanes I have a Asus P8Z68 Deluxe. It has 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8) 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black) *1 2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 If I put 2x GTX 480 in the PCIe x8 slots, am I ok putting an Asus Xonar DX in the last x4 slot, or will this impact the bandwidth of the two GPUs?
It shouldn't affect anything. It all adds up to be the same 20 PCI-E lanes no matter what config you use. Edit: Elton's response makes more sense than this one lol
If my understanding of the Z68 chipset is correct, the "graphics" PCIe slots are controlled directly from the CPU. The third x16 (physical) slot uses the PCIe lanes from the PCH so using it will not have any impact on the graphics performance. I am not certain how Asus have allocated the 8 PCIe lanes from the PCH. There is a possibility that the x16 black slot shares lanes with the x1 slots.