gtx 1070 bottlenecked by PCIe x4 3.0 storage?

[weavenation]

im curious if my having an alienware r4 17 with a 1070 GPU and a samsung p951 m.2 thats m.2 x4 3.0 storage. is using this bottlenecking my gpu so it cant perform at full level? im looking into getting a massive sata ssd to alleviate this.

 

[kanewolf]

The PCIe lanes for the SSD come from the chipset (just like network and SATA interfaces). The PCIe lanes for the GPU come directly from the CPU. An M.2 should not impact the GPU from a PCIe perspective.

 

[weavenation]

So my graphics card is running at pcie 3.0 x16 speeds regardless of me having a pcie storage ssd??

 

[kanewolf]

Should be. Unless active it cuts back the interface to save power.

 

[weavenation]

i downloaded GPUz and its running at 3.0x8 pcie lanes. not sure if its bottlenecking it though. have to get a regular ssd as a boot drive and take out the pciex4 ssd

 

[kanewolf]

You didn't say you were using a PCIe card. I assumed you were using a motherboard port. A second PCIe card in the second x16 slot would drop your graphics to x8. The motherboard thinks you MIGHT have a second graphics card so it splits the CPU PCIe lanes.

 

[weavenation]

its was a laptop kanewolf, no option for a pcie motherboard port. however thunderbolt 3 uses pcie lanes so my laptop runs at x8 either way with the ssd. it doesnt have any performance drop with this though. my fps is identical with the pcie ssd and without.