Question regarding PCI-E slots

[patrickadizzle]

Hey Ya'll.

Bought a new sound card for cheap, X-FI Xtreme Audio.

Pretty sure my old soundcard was just dead, nothing more to it then that.

I installed it, but it forced me to move my GPU, as the sound-card is PCI-E 1X.

I uninstalled GPU drivers, moved my GPU to the middle PCI-E slot, and reinstalled the latest Catalyst drivers.

My problem is, my performance in the game I play, Battlefield Bad Company 2, is very poor now.

Is the middle PCI-E slot on my motherboard 8X? Is that "bogging" down my system?

Red is where I used to have it, Blue is where I now have it after installing the soundcard.

Thanks for any help.

[zanzabar]

im not sure on the slots on the p35 but the bottom slot is a 1x or 4x from the ich9r and i would suggest using that slot for the sound card

[Oberon]

If you don't mind using the slot, you can just install the soundcard in one of the x16 slots; there's no real reason to move the GPU.

[patrickadizzle]

If you don't mind using the slot, you can just install the soundcard in one of the x16 slots; there's no real reason to move the GPU.

I didn't know you could do this! Interesting.

I'll give it a shot.


Thanks.

[Oberon]

I didn't know you could do this! Interesting.

I'll give it a shot.


Thanks.

Yup, no problem. I've got my tiny little Abit Airpace wifi card installed in a x16 slot; it looks awfully funny. (For those that haven't seen the card before, the PCB only extends to the length of the x1 connector).

[ziddey]

you can use cpuz or gpuz to see what your video card is running at. but yes, for what it's worth, move the gpu back to the first x16 slot.

fwiw, although unrelated, you can stick a x16 card in a x1 slot as well. I needed to do this since I got a third monitor. I didn't feel like pulling out the motherboard and working the end of the x1 slow with a dremel, so I just took some pliers and broke the end of the x1 slot off. sure, the video card will only run x1, but it's for an auxiliary screen anyway

[ExodusC]

fwiw, although unrelated, you can stick a x16 card in a x1 slot as well. I needed to do this since I got a third monitor. I didn't feel like pulling out the motherboard and working the end of the x1 slow with a dremel, so I just took some pliers and broke the end of the x1 slot off. sure, the video card will only run x1, but it's for an auxiliary screen anyway

Yes, this is what I've heard. Some people used to buy lower-end NVIDIA GPUs for PhysX and would stick them in an x1 or x4 slot (they did what you did, broke off the end) and would run them fine like that.

You'd think the generic PCI-E connectors wouldn't have the ends on them, since any PCI-E slot can run any card in it, of course running at whichever speed is the slowest.

[ziddey]

yeah I was pretty excited to have a dedicated physx processor if that'd mean more gpu power. then i find out my $10ar geforce 210 is useless at cuda. oh well, no loss. free monitor + $10 video card sounds good to me.

sorry to thread jack