Need a Bit of Advice

[Xero717]

So I installed my new motherboard last night (Asus Maximus V GENE), along with a cooler I got last year on black friday, the Noctua NH-D14. The cooler is just massive, and it's hovering over the first PCI-E slot on the motherboard, making it unusable. So I had to put my GTX 680 in the 2nd PCI-E slot. Bare in mind this is a z77 motherboard and a sandy bridge processor, and on this particular motherboard the 2nd PCI-E slot will only run my GTX 680 at PCI-E 2.0 x8. Without really being able to properly bench (because the first slot is inaccessible), how much throughput am I losing by using PCI-E 2.0 x8 as opposed to x16 with this card? I'm already pretty sure I'm not doing it justice, but to be honest, my last motherboard (AsRock Extreme4 GEN3) was pretty shitty and I can't really tell the difference right now, and games are actually running better.

I'm just wondering if I should leave things the way they are or seek another cooler. I really like this Noctua one though, as the same chip (i5 2500k) is running now at 28 to 30 C as opposed to 50 C with my previous cooler master one. (Same clock speeds, v is actually a little lower with this motherboard)

Also, just to avoid it, I am already aware that the Noctua website says there might be complications with VGA Cards when using this particular motherboard, due the distance from the CPU socket to the first PCI-E slot.

Any input or advice is appreciated, thanks.

 

[W1zzard]

i got that board in my new vga test system.

if they both run in 3.0 mode, the difference will be negligible. i'm planning to have a review comparing pcie configs with ivy bridge, soon.
make sure you really get 3.0 mode, i have to switch pcie speed from auto to gen 3, so it would pick the highest mode on all cards

i noticed the same space issue on my board and ended up using a smaller noctua cooler, nhu12p i think

 

[Xero717]

It's a really great board so far, especially from what I use to be using. I can't even sell my old board in good conscious knowing how badly it performed.

I'm not sure I'll be upgrading to Ivy just yet (I have a feeling intel will have a different stepping in the future before haswell releases, plus my sandy chip clocks like a monster), so I'm still stuck with having pci-e 2.0.

Do you know offhand the differences in performance of current gen cards when it comes to pci-e 2.0 x8 and x16?

 

[W1zzard]

Do you know offhand the differences in performance of current gen cards when it comes to pci-e 2.0 x8 and x16?

last time i tested it was for gtx 480: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_480_PCI-Express_Scaling/24.html

1-2% difference at typical resolutions

 

[Xero717]

Thanks!

I look forward to your review with pci-e 3.0 and ivy bridge, perhaps it'll make me take the jump sooner.