Revodrive at the bottom x4 PCIe slot alongside 8x8 SLi setup

[bad_machine]

Hi guys

As I mentioned on a previous thread, I'm planning to use either a latest generation SATA3 Sandforce drive (OCZ MaxIOPS or Patriot Wildfire) or a PCIe Revodrive 3 X2 on my new AsRock Z68 Fatal1ty Gen3 build. If I choose to go the Revo route I'm worried that the bandwidth may be limited since I will be installing it at the bottom PCIe slot of the mobo (x4 slot) alongside my SLi setup at 8x8.

The Fatal1ty mobo features a PLX PEX8608 switch that allows the bottom PCIe slot to be used at x4 without having to disable other on-board features. I'm worried that the switch will make the x4 slot to share bandwidth with other peripherals resulting in reduced Revo performance.

Has anyone tried it? Will I get the full Revo speeds with such a setup? Or should I go for single graphics card @x16 on the first PCIe slot and the Revo @x16 on the second one?

Finally, is using a Revo less troublesome than using one of the latest Sandforce drives on an Intel SATA3 port of the Z68 mobo?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

[mattyg_nz]

From what I've read, the Fatal1ty Z68 has a PCI-e bridge chip to multiplex the main pci-e channel, leaving ample bandwidth to the remaining peripherals. The reported x4 should be true without disabling other functions (only SATA3_A4 and eSATA3 share lanes).

Can't really comment about which form of SSD is more troublesome.