So I told Polygon the other day on Rebel forums I was going to get the Biostar GX3, but now I'm not so sure.

Here's what I want to do.

1st PCI-E slot ATI 4870 now. (4870X2 future)
2nd slot 8-lane HW or SW raid card
3rd slot PCI-E Intel 2 port network card
4th slot PCI-E sound card... probably Auzentech or maybe ASUS

I really like the 790GX boards cause they are cheap and have the onboard video, which is great for normal computer work. But I just don't think they have enough PCI-E lanes.

My issue is this, I'm not sure if the 4870X2 is max out with ver. 2.0 8-lanes or I probably should get 16 lanes for the video card. And do PCI-E raid cards use ver. 10 or can they up to ver. 2.0 PCI-E

The thing that pisses me off is that if you put a card in PCI-E slot 2 (even if it's non graphics) slot 1 gets bumped down to 8 lanes.

Why isn't it possible to select the number of lanes you want per slot from the total.

So like 790GX has 32 lanes total I believe?

slot 1 16 lanes
slot 2 8 lanes
slot 3 1 lanes
slot 4 1 lanes
NB->SB connection & Internal PCI-E Network chip 6 lanes (i think)
16+8+6+1+1=32

But noooo, I can't do that... instead it forces me to do
8x - 8x - 1x - 1x and the extras lanes go unused.

SOrry for the rant. Just frustrated. Any tips, thoughts, or musings?

ETlight

P.S. So far I got
AMD 5600+ 2.8 X2 (Deneb later )
8gig OCZ HTPC 1066
Windows 64-bit and Ubuntu64

Need to get or still deciding on
Sound card
raid card
Acard ram disk
intel dual network card
etc.