Installing Video Card on Second PCI-E slot - Help

[suraswami]

Is it possible to run the VGA card on the second PCI-E slot without putting a card in the first slot? How will the board take it as.

I am upgrading my Media PC and the HDD cage is in way of the first PCI-E slot. So I want to install on the second PCI-E and make it work.

Any thoughts/suggestions please.

Thanks.

 

[panchoman]

the second slot is limited to act either an x4/x8 slot(unless you have an x38/x48 board) , rather then x16 so you can do it, but you'll have major performance hits.(i believe)

 

[rick22]

it will work but most of the time it will run in a lower pci express setting such as the first slot being x16 adn the second being x2 unless u have a 32 lane board

 

[Dark_Webster]

If it is an Nforce chipset, you can run the card in the second slot running at x16(if there is no card in the first slot). What is the board and graphics card?

 

[suraswami]

Its a ECS KN1 SLI Lite Socket 939 board.

 

[Dark_Webster]

Yeah, it's an nforce chipset. You can run it without problems in the second slot.

 

[panchoman]

its not going to run at x16 speeds, maybe x8 or x4, the only 2 chipsets that can do x16/x16 are the x38 and x48.

 

[suraswami]

Thanks.

 

[Ripper3]

its not going to run at x16 speeds, maybe x8 or x4, the only 2 chipsets that can do x16/x16 are the x38 and x48.

Nforce chipsets were capable of 16x/16x since the later nForce 4 boards, while the 680 supports it natively AFAIK.
And Dark_Webster means that it will do 16x with only one graphics card, by diverting the full 16 lanes to the other slot. If he were to install a second graphics card, it would split it into 8x/8x. In theory, that would be the result, and I've seen people do it before.

 

[panchoman]

hmmm interesting, i thought that x16/x16 was only avaliable on the x38/x48 chipsets, as for diverting the lanes, i thought the slots were electrically reduced to x8/x4 so that'd mean that the lanes cant be diverted.

 

[MGrant1957]

with a NF4 chipset...

with the NF4 SLI chipset, there are 20 PIC-E lanes, 16 are dedicate to the Graphics sub-system. That being said, if you only put in 1 card in either x16 slot, that card will operate at 4GB/s that is x16 speed. If you put in a second card the board will split the bandwidth to x8/x8. some of the newer NF4 boards like the asus a8n32-SLI have 40 PCI-E lanes in them with 32 dedicated to the graphocs sub-system. You should have no trouble putting just one card in the second slot.

 

[freeboy]

the 4 or 8 comment is just not true, look at the board specs.. my old nvidea based board had true 32 two 16 slots where each would indiependantly offer 16x
So read the specs on your board

 

[Solaris17]

idk bout u but my dfi runs the second at 8x and the first at 16x but if i run it in the second slot i can ujust it with jumpers on the board with my buddys lanparty ultra (939) he can cgange it in bios

 

[MGrant1957]

I should have been more specific...

The Original NF4 chipset mainboards had 2 phisical x16 slots but only had 16 lanes to use for Both of them, if you had only 1 card installed it would run at x16 speed, if you installed 2 cards it ould use x8 for each card. The later boards had the x16 chipset that had 32 lands dedicated to video and would allow both cards to run at x16 speed.

 

[tkpenalty]

hmmm interesting, i thought that x16/x16 was only avaliable on the x38/x48 chipsets, as for diverting the lanes, i thought the slots were electrically reduced to x8/x4 so that'd mean that the lanes cant be diverted.

Nope, wrong. Thats with Crossfire. First gen crossfire was 8x,8x, then 16x and 4x with the P965, P35, G33, and 16x

However, Nvidia has had 16x SLI for a long time already.

 

[freeboy]

so is sli a clear winner vs crossfire in like cards at 16x2 over 16x4?

 

[Solaris17]

well yes and no its a tech advantage that doesnt count anymore seeing asd i bealive both companys do it not that it matters though because the cards dont saturate the bus that much however...to be fair thats speaking of 16x the card may saturate 2x or 4x speeds though which would lead to bottlenecking.

 

[patton45]

if you have the option in you bios you can in the nforce 4 chipset make sure its x16 i can on my board and about nforce supporting it later is true partial but i guess you forgot about the abit fatal1ty board 939 was true x16 x16 sli with 32 lanes and the ability to make the secondary the bootable and primary slot. You can adjust the same things in quite a few boards bios. i should know i have one of em in my collection of computer parts its got a X2 4400+ toledo core sitting in a box FS if anyone wants it even though thats off topic
and that board was out within the first two months of 939 release i know cause ive had it since then