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Motherboards Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z SLI X16 and X8 PCI-E Slots

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Rai, 4 Sep 2011.

  1. Rai

    Rai What's a Dremel?

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    I recently built a new gaming computer. (If I have time I will make a project log.) It is running two GTX 580s in SLI.

    However, the first (closest to the CPU) PCI-E slot is an X16 / x8 PCI-E slot and is currently running in X8, while the second PCI-E slot (2nd from the CPU) is running as an X16 slot.

    Is there a way that I can force the first PCI-E slot to run as an X16 slot?

    If not, what should I do to maximize the performance gained from running the cards in SLI?

    Any help is greatly appreciated. ;)
     
  2. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    I think the Z68 board runs both at x8 when in SLI. Nothing you can do about that as it's normal and in any case x16 would not make a massive difference. If you did want to improve performance then I would recommend finding the best stable overclock on each card individually (remove SLI configuration) then put your best card on top (closest to CPU) and the weaker overclocker below. Then in SLI (whilst keeping an eye on temperatures!) you could overclock to the weakest cards maximum stable clock and for games lacking an SLI profile you can simply overclock the primary card to its maximum.

    Read up on using MSI Afterburner if you're not familiar with GPU overclocking.
     
  3. Rai

    Rai What's a Dremel?

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    I may overclock the cards in the future. Right now I am trying to work out a few minor issues. I think it is best to get everything running smoothly beyond a shadow of a doubt before pushing the limits.

    Thanks for the information though. ;) To be honest, I was not sure what the performance difference would be between X16 and X8.

    I suppose another thing to do would be to run some benchmarks. :worried:
     
  4. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Heaven Benchmark is good to flex your system. Otherwise for comparative analysis find a cheap code for the recent Futuremark on ebay and run the standard suite of tests and see how your PC measures up against other similar configurations. At standard settings mine is below average but overclocked with like for like hardware puts my system in the top percent for raw performance.
     
  5. thetrashcanman

    thetrashcanman Angel headed hipsters

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    Right, I think your board has an NF200 chip, in which case, it means you need to put something in the top slot (which you obviously have) but it needs to be something like a soundcard or a wireless card to engage the nf200 chip.

    Then you can put the graphics card's in slots 2 and 4 (out of the 4 full Pcie slots you have) then you should get both cards running at 16x :)

    this video should help http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtI-BGBye6w skip to about 5:10 and yes I know it is a p67 board, but the same principle applies :) hope that helps
     
  6. Rai

    Rai What's a Dremel?

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    I feared that the answer might be to move the cards to different PCI-E slots. That will have to wait, as I would have to drain the water cooling loop.

    Thanks for the input. :)
     
  7. Trantham

    Trantham What's a Dremel?

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    Let me save you some time. On the Asus Maximus Extreme-Z You want to use pcie slot 1 and 3 at 8x. This is the native intel bridge not the NF200 chip. Why would you want the 8x slots and not the NF200 16x slots you wonder. Lag...you can test for yourself if you like but I will tell you this..using my ASUS gtx 590's in slot 1 and 3 8x 8x i get average 5 FPS better than using the NF200 slot 2 and 4 16x 16x. However some synthetic benchs will actually get higher scores on the NF200 slots. Just goes to show how little benchmarks such as 3d mark should be trusted compared to real world results on games such as BF:BC2. Let me know if you get any different results with your cards.
     
  8. Aberdeen

    Aberdeen What's a Dremel?

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    Trantham,
    In your set up, IMO, should be best using slot 2 and 4. Especially when your using 2, 590's that already have NF200 bridges built into the card ( 3 NF200 chips). A video card that use double GPUs like the 590 and the 9800x2 for example, really benefits from the full bandwidth of a 16x PCIe since a 590 is like stuffing a 580 in one PCIe slot alone.

    With my set up, I found a huge performance increase using my (sole) 580 in slot 2, with my raid controller card that needs 8x in slot 1, the performance increase was about 12% -15% better FPS. That performance increase in just moving the card from slot 1 to 2 was even greater than me overclocking my 580 to 950 Mhz using slot 1 alone at 16x.

    I know it sounds crazy, especially when the Asus manual says to use slot 1 for best performance.
    But when insert my Raid card in any slot, such as 2 0r 4, even with the naive x8 slot 3, my video performance takes a huge hit when Slot one goes to 8x mode.

    When I first got my Asus Max-z board I happy until I realized this 16x going in to 8x video performance drop when another 16x slot was populated. It got me so sick i just wanted to toss the Z68 platform out the window. But with alot of experiments and testing various slot positions with my raid card and other add in cards, like with my wireless, and sound card and found the optimum card position that will give me max performance with my particular setup,
    I totally regained my happiness with this system build.

    One thing that dives me nuts is the horrible sound quality with the on board sound with this motherboard in such a price range. I cannot imagine gaming with this board with 3 video cards populating all the PCIe slots, without a extra slot available for a quality soundcard.

    All the 3.0 USB ports are awesome, but it would nice to have ALL SATA 3 ports and get rid of the Sata 2's. I don't understand why they are still messing with SATA 2 on all these boards...
    Some AMD platforms have all sata 3.. :wallbash:
     

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