Pci 2.0 x8 Bottleneck Titan

[bpgt64]

Motherboard is a X79-UP4
Monitor is Dell UP2414Q 4k panel
3930k cpu

PCEi slot layout;

http://www.techpowerup.org/uploaded.php?file=140217/mobo.jpg

From manual
Expansion slot info;

1. 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16_1, PCIEX16_2)
   * For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
   
2. 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x8 (PCIEX8_1, PCIEX8_2)
   * The PCIEX8_2 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16_2 slot. When the PCIEX8_2 slot is populated, the PCIEX16_2 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.
   (All PCI Express x16 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
   
3. 2 x PCI Express x1 slots
   (All PCI Express x1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
   
4. 1 x PCI slot

Card's I want to plug in;

2 Geforce Titans
1 LSi 9266 4i 8x
1 Soundblaster PCIe sound card 1x

Layout would be,

Titan
LSI card
Titan
Sound Card

In each of the 16x slots. I am strongly considering selling my 3930k for something in the Ivy bridge category to get PCIe 3.0 . Normally, I wouldn't bother, but with lane speed becoming an issue related to the processor. It makes sense somewhat to me. Thoughts?

 

[erocker]

Difference between x16 and x8 is minimal as is the difference between 2.0 and 3.0. 5% give or take.

 

[bpgt64]

Difference between x16 and x8 is minimal as is the difference between 2.0 and 3.0. 5% give or take.

That's kind of what I thought, but some of the GTX 690 cards noticed significant bottlenecks at PCIe 2.0 x16, I was wondering if I am seeing the same thing..

 

[cadaveca]

It affects performance, sure.

3.0:

2.0:

Add in a RAID card, and yeah, I can see how you might be seeing larger impacts on performance.

There area few boards out there that offer 16/8/16 on SB-E, like the UD5, but they are few and far between. As an actual impact for benchmarking, it is going to depend on how much utilization you have on the RAID card at the same time, and how that extra traffic uses the PCIe controller.

Is it worth the cost to upgrade for PCIe 3.0? That's hard to judge. With "money to burn", I would not hesitate, but on a budget, I think I could make do.

 

[bpgt64]

The main thing is, I would sell the 3930k and drop in a 4820k.

 

[cadaveca]

The main thing is, I would sell the 3930k and drop in a 4820k.

Then it becomes a matter of whether the loss of cores is worth the gain in PCIe for you. For my own needs, I'd take the cores. At the same time, I use disk space very little, and have no need for a RAID card.

 

[bpgt64]

My logic behind the upgrade in Processor, is that if I can gain access to PCIe 3.0 then my GPU's will have the rough equivilant at x16 2.0 = x8 3.0. Eliminating any possibility of a bottleneck.

 

[FR@NK]

Your system is already PCIE 3.0.

You wont have any bottleneck if you put the sound card in the 1x slot and leave the last full size slot unpopulated.

 

[bpgt64]

Your system is already PCIE 3.0.

You wont have any bottleneck if you put the sound card in the 1x slot and leave the last full size slot unpopulated.

The only thing I don't like about that, is it puts the sound card right on top of the second GPU, which increases it's temps ~5C.

 

[AsRock]

Then your solution is simple.. try it both ways regardless of the 5c raise and see if it is making a impact on your gaming to a point of being bothered.

 

[jcgeny]

you could do :


LSI card PCIEX16_1
Sound Card PCIEX1_1
Titan PCIEX8_1 or PCIEX8_2 if temp is a problem
Titan PCIEX16_2

so you have on vga having 16x insteat of 2 having 8x
you plug monitor on the one at 16 and make it main display in nvidia panel . [may be boot and bios will prefer card in pciex8_1, if your monitor has dvi+vga [+hdmi] you can plug it to both card]
http://www.nvidia.in/object/sli-technology-multimonitor-in.html
for cpu , get the money in your pocket and buy a xeon in a year or two , latest have 12 cores ...and price will be low

 

[Blue-Knight]

Your system is already PCIE 3.0.

I thought it is being limited by the processor... According to Intel its PCI Express revision is 2.0.

 

[bpgt64]

I thought it is being limited by the processor... According to Intel its PCI Express revision is 2.0.

This, the 3930k only supports PCI-E 2.0 Which would normally be fine. But I think I am seeing it bottleneck the GPUs. So I am going to really side grade to a 4930k or a 4820k later today and sell the old proc.

 

[cadaveca]

I am very interested to hear how this works out for you...don't hear of many users with RAID cards any more since SSDs dropped below $1 per GB.

The drop in power consumption and temps will be nice for you, for sure. You'll probably go from 130-150W down to 70-90W @ stock. The cheaper cost of ownership and the lessened noise are worth it anyway, in my books.

 

[eidairaman1]

Always best to run both cards in full peg 16 slots however the pe 8x 2slot shares bandwidth with the peg 16 2slot

 

[bpgt64]

I am very interested to hear how this works out for you...don't hear of many users with RAID cards any more since SSDs dropped below $1 per GB.

The drop in power consumption and temps will be nice for you, for sure. You'll probably go from 130-150W down to 70-90W @ stock. The cheaper cost of ownership and the lessened noise are worth it anyway, in my books.

My goal with this setup, is get enough Sequential write speed for fraps to be able to keep up when recording 4k. I did some 4k recording at half size yesterday;

Please ignore the the audio, I uploaded all 120Gbs of uncompressed video to youtube as soon as it was done recording.

Also, the voice is not me

 

[eidairaman1]

Reminds me of BattleTech-MechWarrior-MechAssault 2.

or Somewhat Like Super Dimension Series/Robotech

or Pacific Rim

 

[jcgeny]

This, the 3930k only supports PCI-E 2.0 Which would normally be fine. But I think I am seeing it bottleneck the GPUs. So I am going to really side grade to a 4930k or a 4820k later today and sell the old proc.

i read that the 3xxx i7 are able to do pcie3 but are not "certified" , i have an asus sabertooth and my i7 3820 is having pcie 3.0 in some bios settings .
my gfx are gt570 so only pcie2
by the way , pcie 3 will be used with nv800 and r300 .

you should buy a dual xeon mobo to compress your film , a second hand 1366 is a very good choice , 120 Go should drop a lot .
try avidemux that works under win / linux for recompression
or buy some cards make for that http://gamerzone.avermedia.com/ http://hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_hdpvr2plus-gaming.html
once again they are doing HD 1920x1080 and next generation will do 4k... as well as youtube ...

for your film in 4k above , gameplay is very good ;']
but when i see it , i think again like i told me during this afternoon when i was gaming with Rage : realism is very good and looks like in real life...but people play video games : for not staying in the "real world" . no ?

 

[Random Murderer]

Motherboard is a X79-UP4
Monitor is Dell UP2414Q 4k panel
3930k cpu

PCEi slot layout;

http://www.techpowerup.org/uploaded.php?file=140217/mobo.jpg

From manual
Expansion slot info;

1. 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16_1, PCIEX16_2)
   * For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
   
2. 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x8 (PCIEX8_1, PCIEX8_2)
   * The PCIEX8_2 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16_2 slot. When the PCIEX8_2 slot is populated, the PCIEX16_2 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.
   (All PCI Express x16 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
   
3. 2 x PCI Express x1 slots
   (All PCI Express x1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
   
4. 1 x PCI slot

Card's I want to plug in;

2 Geforce Titans
1 LSi 9266 4i 8x
1 Soundblaster PCIe sound card 1x

Layout would be,

Titan
LSI card
Titan
Sound Card

In each of the 16x slots. I am strongly considering selling my 3930k for something in the Ivy bridge category to get PCIe 3.0 . Normally, I wouldn't bother, but with lane speed becoming an issue related to the processor. It makes sense somewhat to me. Thoughts?

Your PCIe lanes split the same way mine do. If you put anything at all in the very bottom PCIe x16 slot (PCIEX8_2 in your diagram), it will reduce your second PCIe x16 slot (PCIEX16_2 in the diagram) to x8. If you want both Titans to be in full x16 mode, then you'll need to place the cards in the following slots:

Titan (PCIEX16_1)
LSI RAID card (PCIEX8_1)
Sound Card (PCIEX1_2)
Titan (PCIEX16_2)

That configuration is the only way you'll get x16 to both Titans and use all four of the cards you want to. If your Titans are watercooled, you could also put the sound card in PCIEX1_1 and get the same result. Keep in mind, this is also regardless of processor. Another thing to note is that although it is not "officially" supported, X79 does have PCIe 3.0 support on SB-E, it's just not as much bandwidth as it could be (make sure PCIE Gen 3 is selected in BIOS if you have that option). If you don't believe me, run the GPU-Z render test with your SB-E installed and tell me what revision it shows the cards using

 

[jcgeny]

i read http://www.gigabyte.fr/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4288#sp
and Random Murderer seems right :

1. 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16_1, PCIEX16_2)
   * For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
   
2. 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x8 (PCIEX8_1, PCIEX8_2)
   * The PCIEX8_2 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16_2 slot. When the PCIEX8_2 slot is populated, the PCIEX16_2 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.
   (All PCI Express x16 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)

for your "recording power" , may be you can install 2 ssd on the sata-x79 as raid disk + 4 ssd as raid on the Marvell 88SE9172 chips and same with your lsi .
then in windows you use this 3 raid drives to create a "software raid" : that should be great for gaming too ;']

 

[bpgt64]

Your PCIe lanes split the same way mine do. If you put anything at all in the very bottom PCIe x16 slot (PCIEX8_2 in your diagram), it will reduce your second PCIe x16 slot (PCIEX16_2 in the diagram) to x8. If you want both Titans to be in full x16 mode, then you'll need to place the cards in the following slots:

Titan (PCIEX16_1)
LSI RAID card (PCIEX8_1)
Sound Card (PCIEX1_2)
Titan (PCIEX16_2)

That configuration is the only way you'll get x16 to both Titans and use all four of the cards you want to. If your Titans are watercooled, you could also put the sound card in PCIEX1_1 and get the same result. Keep in mind, this is also regardless of processor. Another thing to note is that although it is not "officially" supported, X79 does have PCIe 3.0 support on SB-E, it's just not as much bandwidth as it could be (make sure PCIE Gen 3 is selected in BIOS if you have that option). If you don't believe me, run the GPU-Z render test with your SB-E installed and tell me what revision it shows the cards using

That would work. My only issue with that is fitting the Titan it hamper the air flow of the top card a minor amount. I am still thinking of just selling my 3930k just to get the PCI-E 3.0, just to see if it has any improvement at 4k@60hz in terms of performance.

 

[15th Warlock]

Wait, aren't all X79 boards supposed to have 40x lanes dedicated just to graphics?

If not, this would be the first X79 board I've ever seen that doesn't at least support dual cards at 16x, are you sure that is the case?

You can always force gen 3 on x79 boards, just Google for the patch and an 8x gen 3 PCIe slot would still have the same performance as a 16x gen 2 PCIe slot.

That would work. My only issue with that is fitting the Titan it hamper the air flow of the top card a minor amount. I am still thinking of just selling my 3930k just to get the PCI-E 3.0, just to see if it has any improvement at 4k@60hz in terms of performance.

You posted this while I was writing this post, you can totally have a 3930K and still support PCIe 3.0 on your cards, I'm telling you because I have one.

Like I said, just Google "force enable PCIe 3 on X79" to download the patch.

At one point I had four GTX 680s operating at 16x8x8x8x and PCIe 3.0 using my 3930k, it's totally doable.

 

[bpgt64]

Wait, aren't all X79 boards supposed to have 40x lanes dedicated just to graphics?

If not, this would be the first X79 board I've ever seen that doesn't at least support dual cards at 16x, are you sure that is the case?

You can always force gen 3 on x79 boards, just Google for the patch and an 8x gen 3 PCIe slot would still have the same performance as a 16x gen 2 PCIe slot.



You posted this while I was writing this post, you can totally have a 3930K and still support PCIe 3.0 on your cards, I'm telling you because I have one.

Like I said, just Google "force enable PCIe 3 on X79" to download the patch.

At one point I had four GTX 680s operating at 16x8x8x8x and PCIe 3.0 using my 3930k, it's totally doable.

Interesting...I have it turned on in Bios. Might be worth a go.

 

[15th Warlock]

Interesting...I have it turned on in Bios. Might be worth a go.

You still need to download the patch I told you about, Nvidia cards need that patch to operate at PCIe 3.0 on X79, even if you enable gen 3 from your BIOS your cards will still work at 2.0 bandwidths.

Good luck

 

[Random Murderer]

Interesting...I have it turned on in Bios. Might be worth a go.

Yeah, my 3820 ran 3.0 without issue. As Warlock mentioned, you'll need the patch for NV cards, but it is functioning on SB-E.