Will SLI work across PCIe difference?

NoobOnPC

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Jul 19, 2015
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I wanted to eventually get a second graphics card to work in SLI, but my Motherboard only has 1 PCIe 3x16. It does however have PCIe 2x16 and i was curious since PCI is backwards compatible, would it be capable running SLI using 3 and 2? Ive read that the difference in performance across 3 and 2 isn't much, like 5-10%, but i want to know if they can sli together before i drop some more serious cash XD
 


So i looked it up, and it mentions how it can in fact run dual cards, but it has more than 1 PCIe 2x1 so it might be refering to that, right? What im trying to say is, can one graphics card run on the PCIe3x16 while the second runs on the PCIe2x16?
 
SLI requires at least eight PCI Express lanes to each PCI Express slot that each graphics card is inserted into.

If you're using an FM2+ motherboard that will be highly unlikely. That PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot will only have four lanes wired to it and it will be connected to the PCI-E 2.0 bus on the AMD A??? chipset.
 


your explanation was a little... hard to understand. can you please reword it a different way? The motherboard supports dual cards tho, so why should it not?
 


No AMD A88X chipset motherboard will ever support SLI mode.

Any motherboard that supports SLI will include an SLI bridge connector in the motherboard package. Did you find an SLI bridge connector included in your motherboard package?
 


Can you give an explanation for why it can't, i mean, it didn't come with a connector, it has the slots for SLI, but why won't it support, just because it says so isnt quite good enough for me to understand why 😵
 


Can you not? I'm not an idiot, i just didn't understand his comment due to the way he worded it. Thanks.
 


Your motherboard has (from the ASRock FM2A88X+ BTC User Manual):
• 1 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slot (PCIE4 @ x16 mode)
• 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 Slot (PCIE5 @ x4 mode)
• Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™, CrossFireX™ and Dual Graphics

Nowhere in the manual does it say that it supports NVIDIA SLI.

That motherboard does not have the two PCI-E x16 slots @ x8 mode minimum required to support 2-way SLI. The CPU also doesn't allow the support of SLI.
 


What is dual graphics? 😵
 


oh okay, well thats sucks i can't SLI my card, but for future reference, if i was able to sli, is it possible to go on 2 separate PCIe levels? ie) 1 on PCIe3 and 1 on PCIe2
 


No . SLI and crossfire split the lanes from a single pci-e x16 slot . If its split then they could not be different .


Some motherboards can crossfireX which is not crossfire but can let you run to cards in separate slots .It's not a high end solution ever .