PCIe lanes with 2x GPU and NIC

[ToastedBaby]

Right now, I have an MSI Z87-G45 motherboard with Killer e2200 Gigabit LAN. The Killer LAN sucks majorly ---(plenty of other people have issues with it. Mine include not being able to actually get gigabit speeds, and it throttling my connection, even without the Killer Network Manager installed). I want to get a PCIe x1 Gigabit NIC (I have one in an old computer, and it's getting twice the download speed) but I was wondering if this would change my PCIe lanes. I have 2 GTX 770's in SLI and a 4770K, and each GPU is running at PCIe 3.0 x8 since the CPU only supports 16 lanes. If I get the NIC, will it slow down to x8 and x4 for the GPU's, since the x1 slot will take up one lane? Or do the x1 slots not affect the x16 slots I'm using for my GPU's?

 

[digitaldoc]

I think you should be ok, and the x1 lanes should not effect the x16 lanes. I would go ahead and try the other card.

I had not heard good things about the Killer NIC either!

 

[popatim]

Msi does not provide a block diagram in their manual but the x1 slot typically comes off the southbridge chip and the x16's are from the cpu.