cpu/motherbaord chipset lanes

[cocokid50036]

so honestly idk much about lanes
read somewhere that some cpus give x amount of lanes for gpu, and that the motherboards will support x amount of lanes for stuff like NVMe...

i got the nuclear reactor fx 9590 with an asrock 970 A-G/3.1

any ideas or thought?

 

[asoroka]

Good luck, make sure you get a decent PSU and heat sink.

Your primary GPU should sit in the first slot as that will get 16 PCI lanes, the second slot only has 4 PCI lanes.
Just means more bandwidth in that first slot.

You don't have to worry about PCI lanes unless you are planning on multiple cards.

You can't have both m2 pcie ssd and something in the second PCI 16 slot.

 

[cocokid50036]

i have the h100i v2 240mm cooler and a bronze 950 watt psu
my mobo has 3 x16 slots though.
i also use 2 gpu's
but they arent SLI. one is my 970 SSC top pcie slot with 2 1 hdmi and 1 dvi monitor plugged in, and my other is in the 2nd pcie slot (gtx 760) with 1 dvi and 1 hdmi monitor plugged in. i use my 760 for stream encoding and monitor support.

my question is mainly are both of my gpus getting x16 or x8? ik some motherboards only do 1 x16 or 2 x8. does that matter if its sli? am i getting 2 x16 or 2 x8 in my particular set up?

 

[asoroka]

In your case one gets 16 and the other gets 4.

This is determined by your motherboard.
Expansion
Slot
• 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 Slot (PCIE2: x16 mode)
• 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 Slot (PCIE4: x4 mode)
• 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 Slots
• 1 x PCI Slot

 

[cocokid50036]

sorry i was wrong i have 2 x16 atleast i think? is the black one that runs about the same length as the red ones also a x16?
(https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/970A-G3.1/#Support)

i have both gpus in the red x16 slots

weird didnt know that so my 970, on the top red x16 is running at full x16 but the bottom red x16 with my 760 is running in x4?

 

[asoroka]

The black one is PCI (not PCiE) it is much slower and does not use your PCIE lanes.
Your PCIE x16 has a 16GB/S transfer, the PCI (black one) is only 133MB/s.

http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-pci-and-pci-express/

In your case the top red one has 16 lanes so full 16GB/s transfer, while the bottom one only has 4 lanes and 4GB/s transfer. They both have the same size connector, just to confuse things.

So you should have your best card in the top slot.

 

[cocokid50036]

ok thanks a lot i do. using my 760 for stream encoding i dont feel like i notice a degredation in encoding quality by it being in a x4 config do you feel like the x4 is fast enough or should i do cpu or use my 970?

 

[asoroka]

If you are ok with performance then no need to change.

You would have to change motherboard if you wanted more bandwidth on your second slot.

 

[cocokid50036]

If you are ok with performance then no need to change.

You would have to change motherboard if you wanted more bandwidth on your second slot.

ok thanks a lot i appreciate the help and clarification