Intel S5520HC PCEe x16 or 8x?

[scottfree1_01]

I bought a S5520HC one of the reasons I choose it over other boards was the pcie-x16 slot, the slot mentioned in the official intel product spec. sheet. It arrives today so I downloaded the manual (service manual it turns out) and it says the slot is "x16 Mechanically, x8 Electrically" anyone know which is correct?

Intel® Server Board S5520HC Product Specifications

One PCIe x16 Gen 2.x

https://ark.intel.com/products/36599/Intel-Server-Board-S5520HC

Service Manual
Intel® Server Board S5520HC
One PCI Express* Gen 2 slot (x16 Mechanically, x8 Electrically)

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/motherboards/server/s5520hc/sb/e39527008_s5520hc_s5500hcv_service_guide.pdf

 

[4745454b]

What I found odd is the three 8x slots. I know they exist, but up till now I've never seen in the wild. 1x, and 4x slots sure, but I've never seen an 8x slot on a board let alone 3 of them. (I don't look at server boards often.) Looking at your first link it says there are 36 PCIe lanes. If the 16x slot was hooked up to 16 of them, that would leave 20 for everything else. 3*8=24, so we know there can't be 16 lanes attached to that slot. 4*8=32, with one more attached to that 1x slot for 33. This leaves 3 lanes. I just looked again and that 1x slot is a 1.0 lane and not a 2.0 lane. Intel normally leaves 4 lanes to run from the MCH (or whatever they call the southbridge now.) to the CPU, so it seems like they really do have only 8 lanes attached to that 16x slot. That would give you 32 lanes, with 4 lanes running from the MCH/SB to the CPU/NB.

 

[GhislainG]

I bought a S5520HC one of the reasons I choose it over other boards was the pcie-x16 slot, the slot mentioned in the official intel product spec. sheet. It arrives today so I downloaded the manual (service manual it turns out) and it says the slot is "x16 Mechanically, x8 Electrically" anyone know which is correct?

Intel® Server Board S5520HC Product Specifications

One PCIe x16 Gen 2.x

https://ark.intel.com/products/36599/Intel-Server-Board-S5520HC

Service Manual
Intel® Server Board S5520HC
One PCI Express* Gen 2 slot (x16 Mechanically, x8 Electrically)

It's]https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/motherboards/server/s5520hc/sb/e39527008_s5520hc_s5500hcv_service_guide.pdf

It's correct; x8 is plenty to support any controller you could use in it, e.g., a Quad Gigabit controller, a RAID controller, an HBA, etc. You could even install a good video card.

 

[scottfree1_01]

The reason I choose this board (well besides the fact intel specifically SAYS it is x16) was all things being equal having a extra pci-e 8x slot seemed like a GOOD thing, talk about being suckered.. Maybe I'll get lucky and it will be doa, (30 day return) might have case to send it back but the seller did not cut and paste intel specs and there BS x16 claim..

PCIe x16 1
PCIe x8 3
PCIe x8 1

What I almost bought w actual x16 ...
GA-7TESM (rev. 1.0)
PCIe 2.0 x16, 1
PCIe 2.0 x8 1
PCIe 2.0 x4 1
PCI 1

 

[4745454b]

It's not a BS claim though. It is a 16x slot. To be honest because you can plug anything into a 16x slot and it will work I'm not sure why 1x, 4x, 8x slots ever even show up on boards. Should just put a bunch of 16x slots on the board and silkscreen what the electrical connection is.

 

[scottfree1_01]

I bought a S5520HC one of the reasons I choose it over other boards was the pcie-x16 slot, the slot mentioned in the official intel product spec. sheet. It arrives today so I downloaded the manual (service manual it turns out) and it says the slot is "x16 Mechanically, x8 Electrically" anyone know which is correct?

Intel® Server Board S5520HC Product Specifications

One PCIe x16 Gen 2.x

https://ark.intel.com/products/36599/Intel-Server-Board-S5520HC

Service Manual
Intel® Server Board S5520HC
One PCI Express* Gen 2 slot (x16 Mechanically, x8 Electrically)

https://image.ibb.co/gFFzAb/h.jpg[/img]_s5500hcv_service_guide.pdf

It's]https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/motherboards/server/s5520hc/sb/e39527008_s5520hc_s5500hcv_service_guide.pdf

It's correct; x8 is plenty to support any controller you could use in it, e.g., a Quad Gigabit controller, a RAID controller, an HBA, etc. You could even install a good video card.[/quotemsg]

8x handles my pci-e ssd passmark 6000 crystal diskmark 800+ mb r/w

But x16 to 8x and my gtx 760 takes a pretty big hit.

 

[GhislainG]

Few people ever install a gaming GPU in a server, but according to http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/pci-express-3-0-vs-2-0-gaming-performance-gain/4/ the performance drop shouldn't exceed 15% (PCI-E 3.0 x4 is equal to PCI-E 2.0 x8). Ideally testing is performed on the same system; where do the baseline results come from? Another system with an identical CPU and memory?

 

[scottfree1_01]

It's not a BS claim though. It is a 16x slot. To be honest because you can plug anything into a 16x slot and it will work I'm not sure why 1x, 4x, 8x slots ever even show up on boards. Should just put a bunch of 16x slots on the board and silkscreen what the electrical connection is.

My current board has 7 8x in x16 slots, the bs part is the only mention of the x16 slot and that it is actually x8 is buried in the service manual vs key feature number 6..

Key Features

1. Intel® Xeon® processor 5600/5500
series, with QPI up to 6.4 GT/s
2. Dual Intel® 5520 (Tylersburg) Chipsets
3. Up to 192GB DDR3 1333/ 1066/ 800MHz
ECC Registered DIMM / 48GB
Unbuffered DIMM
4. Intel® 82576 Dual-Port Gigabit
Ethernet Controller
5. 6x SATA2 (3 Gbps) Ports via
ICH10R Controller
6. 7 (x8) PCI-E 2.0 ( in x16 slot)
7. Integrated Matrox G200eW Graphics
8. Integrated IPMI 2.0 with Dedicated LAN
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DTH-iF.cfm

 

[scottfree1_01]

Few people ever install a gaming GPU in a server, but according to http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/pci-express-3-0-vs-2-0-gaming-performance-gain/4/ the performance drop shouldn't exceed 15% (PCI-E 3.0 x4 is equal to PCI-E 2.0 x8). Ideally testing is performed on the same system; where do the baseline results come from? Another system with an identical CPU and memory?

''

Same identical system dual xeon x5680's 48gb ddr3 eec, gtx 760, visiontek 240gb pcie ssd the only change sm X8DTH-iF (7 8x in 16x) vs X8DTi-F true x16, and that's why I went cheap ($50 lol) and got the 8x board cause everything I found said 8x should not be a bottleneck, well in my experience it is and since my current board is getting flaky I figured my as well go x16, and if intel did not say x16 on the specs I would have spent +$10 on the gbyte for a real x16 slot..

1 (x16) PCI-E 2.0,
2 (x8) PCI-E 2.0,
1 (x4) PCI-E (in x8 slot),
2x PCI 33MHz slots

 

[scottfree1_01]

Few people ever install a gaming GPU in a server, but according to http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/pci-express-3-0-vs-2-0-gaming-performance-gain/4/ the performance drop shouldn't exceed 15% (PCI-E 3.0 x4 is equal to PCI-E 2.0 x8). Ideally testing is performed on the same system; where do the baseline results come from? Another system with an identical CPU and memory?

I don't game but I do render/encode video and for $200ish you can put together a 12/24x core/thread @ 3.4ghz MONSTER with cinebench scores of 1400+ and video encoding @ 2500+ fps..

 

[GhislainG]

If you use the CPU to encode, then losing a bit of gaming performance shouldn't be an issue. That sure is a lot of CPU performance for $200.