Is there a preferred PCI slot for GPU?

[PompousAss]

I have a new X58A-UD3R into which I'm about to place a Radeon HD 5750.

The board has two x16 slots. Is there a technical reason to use slot 1 instead of slot 2 or vice versa?

I may grab another 5750 down the road, but for the present Crossfire is not an issue.

 

[jefe323]

you should use slot 1

 

[mactronix]

Your manual should list which one to use its usually the 1st slot. The reason is that sometimes the bandwidth of the second slot will drop to x8 as it thinks you are using Crossfire/sli when it detects the card in the second slot.
If you have a Motherboard that has 2x full X16 slots then i dont think(not 100% sure) it makes much differamce. I have seen people use the second slot on such boards due to space requirements of the other hardware.

Mactronix

 

[PompousAss]

Your manual should list which one to use its usually the 1st slot. The reason is that sometimes the bandwidth of the second slot will drop to x8 as it thinks you are using Crossfire/sli when it detects the card in the second slot.
If you have a Motherboard that has 2x full X16 slots then i dont think(not 100% sure) it makes much differamce. I have seen people use the second slot on such boards due to space requirements of the other hardware.

Mactronix

Neither mobo nor gpu docs state a preference. Gigabyte says if you Crossfire two cards you should plug the monitor into the card in slot 1, but that's it. I read through the hardcopy manual and searched the PDF version before posting the question.

My normal default reaction would be to use slot 1, but if I put the gpu in slot 2 I get more separation from the cpu and X58 and would theoretically see better cooling.

 

[jefe323]

if you are using an x58 mobo, then you shouldn't really see any issue putting your gpu in slot 2 (as both slots 1 and 2 run at x16)

 

[johnnyq8]

jefe323 is right but if you said pci slot im afraid thats old gpu model it came before the agp

 

[PompousAss]

The answer is....

Use slot 1.

A friend with the same mobo found this as a footnote in the UD3R manual:

For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16_1 slot

Thanks for all the replies. Clearly I wasn't using the right search string when looking through the PDF before posting the question.