ASUS Rampage Formula - PCI-e x16 ports

[DeltaBravo]

Hi,

I've read some of the forum posts, but not sure how to go about this for a specific motherboard. I have an ASUS Rampage Motherboard and I'm using 64-bit Ubuntu Server. I'd like to use a PCI graphics card (Sparkle still makes a PCI Nvidia 210 model) and free up the two PCI-e x16 ports to use with two LSI Logic SAS/SATA RAID controllers PCI-e x8.

My question is, how do I determine if the PCI-e x16 ports (there's two of them on the motherboard) are for graphics cards only? I thought I've seen warnings to make sure that if you use a x16 slot, make sure it's not for graphics cards only. Buying a RAID controller card is difficult to return sometimes, so I'd like to make sure that what I buy I can keep and use. I did stick a SIIG PCI-e x1 controller into the PCI-e secondary port and I believe it recognizes it - need to plug a drive into it and test it, but is that a sufficient test? Can I assume that if the secondary PCI-e port reads a non-graphics card that the primary card would follow suit?

Thanks for your time.

Dean

 

[Calvin7]

Advanced
North Bridge Chipset Configuration
Initiate Graphics Adapter [PEG/PCI] is the default setting
Change this BIOS option to [PCI/PEG] to use PCI slot first for video card. PEG denotes Pci Express Graphics.

 

[DeltaBravo]

Advanced
North Bridge Chipset Configuration
Initiate Graphics Adapter [PEG/PCI] is the default setting
Change this BIOS option to [PCI/PEG] to use PCI slot first for video card. PEG denotes Pci Express Graphics.

thanks Calvin7 for taking the time. I'll try that. For the secondary x16 slot, the SIIG PCIe SATA card does work and is recognized while the primary x16 port holding PCIe graphics card and BIOS setting set to PEG/PCI. But will keep that in mind when I swap cards and start using the primary PCIe x16 slot for a SAS SATA RAID card.