Graphics cards positions in PCIe slots

[neonsalad]

Hi,

I'm currently running two 1920x1080 monitors from a GTX 570, but would like to add a third monitor. For this I was going to get a cheap card (since all it will be doing is displaying pretty much static images like chat windows and Spotify at 1920x1080). The card I have been looking at is a GeForce 8400gs 512Mb. My motherboard is an ASUS P6TSE, which has 3 PCIex16 slots, although reading around I see that these are set to run at x16/x16/x4. When I install the second card I'd prefer to avoid putting it in the second slot as this is right next to the fan for the GTX570 and I don't want to cause that to overheat too much. Therefore, I'd like to put the second card in the third (i.e. PCIex4) slot. Does anyone know if this is possible (having cards in slots 1 and 3 without one in slot 2) , would the card run OK in that slot and would this lead to bottlenecking in my system?

Many thanks
Stephen

 

[Supernova1138]

You can put the 8400GS into the third slot without any problem, it will work. As far as bandwidth goes, with an 8400GS, that won't be an issue, the card isn't powerful enough to saturate a PCI-E 2.0 x4 connection. If you wanted to add a second 570 in SLI, the x4 bandwidth limitation would be an issue, and would probably lead to a lot of microstuttering. With a really old low end card that is only going to be used for 2D applications, x4 bandwidth is fine.

 

[neonsalad]

That's great news. Thanks for your help!