Will I loose performance if i move my GPU to the 2nd slot?

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oggyphillips

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Feb 15, 2015
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I want some more space for my hyper tx3 cooler for it to breathe since my GTX 1080 is very close to the cooler. The cooler is facing downwards so the fan is pushing air out at the top of the case.

I can just move my GPU to the second PCIe slot. But I've heard that you lose performance, is this true?

I have a Gigabyte GA-B85-HD3-A 1.0 mobo. It is meant for crossfire.
 
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There is some debate around the issue. Generally, judging the performance of a GPU by the slot bandwidth is a bit unfair. But in some tests it is known to make a bit of a difference.

The 2 PCIe slots on that board are different bandwidths, the top (nearest the CPU) is a x16. Whereas the bottom is a x4. You likely wouldn't see much difference swapping between x8 to x16, but the argument often changes when you compare x16 to x4.

You will likely see a performance difference if you swapped to your x4 slot. So most tests would suggest you stay away from swapping to a x4 if you can help it. But dropping from a x16 to a x8, you will not see a difference in real terms.
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There is some debate around the issue. Generally, judging the performance of a GPU by the slot bandwidth is a bit unfair. But in some tests it is known to make a bit of a difference.

The 2 PCIe slots on that board are different bandwidths, the top (nearest the CPU) is a x16. Whereas the bottom is a x4. You likely wouldn't see much difference swapping between x8 to x16, but the argument often changes when you compare x16 to x4.

You will likely see a performance difference if you swapped to your x4 slot. So most tests would suggest you stay away from swapping to a x4 if you can help it. But dropping from a x16 to a x8, you will not see a difference in real terms.
 
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Solution


The 2nd slot only runs at 4x not 8x. The 4x slot is also only PCI-e 2.0.
 
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Yes, you will likely lose performance since the port is only 4x pci-e 2.0.
 
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"But I've heard that you lose performance, is this true?"

This is what Gigabyte has to say about it:
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.

It shows on the specs that the other slot is x16 in physical size but only x4 in speed. (Which isn't enough for a 1080 video card.)

The performance difference isn't nearly as large as I would have expected but it's definitely gonna slow you down if you do it. Looks like the performance hit is larger when you are running higher resolutions.
 
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Ups... You are correct. He has:
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16
(The PCI Express x16 slot conforms to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
2 x PCI Express x1 slots
(The PCIEX4 and PCIEX1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
2 x PCI slots

 
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Techpowerup actually has an article running the 1080 at different pci-e speeds. Depending on the resolution there can be a decent performance penalty, but nothing that made games unplayable by any means but I wouldn't call them negligible.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_PCI_Express_Scaling/
 
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I could just move the CPU fan to the other side since it is a 4x PCI slot.
That should solve it
 
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