OMG! The admin has been busy and I have access! Tnksalot...

Where to begin ...?

Ah, I know. PCIe2x4 link.
I too found it very odd that LSI advertised(& still advertises!) the SAS9211-4i with a x8 link but the actual production uses x4 interface and link.
Here are some numbers:

PCI Express 2.0 (x4 link) 16,000 Mibit/s(2000 MiB/s) == 1.953GB/s
( PCI Express 1.0 (x8 link) is the same)
There is some overhead for the PCIe bus so the theoretical 1.95GB/s is actually somewhat less. There's some argument how much but 5% is pretty safe which yields about 1.86GBps. ithink using 1.9GBps maximum throughput before saturation level is reached is a safe mark.

I ran the numbers and for four drives, SSD or HDD, even with SAS|SATA600 interface, the PCIe2x4 link won't get saturated. Approximately 200MiB/s is the upper limit for the fastest HDD drive. Using 8 drives, with expander, at that rate only produce a total 1600MiB/s(1.56GB/s) which is still well under saturation limits. So PCIe2-x4 link is good enuf for up to at least 8 HDD (via expander of course).

HOWEVER, that's not true when the drives are setup for RAID and an expander is used so more than 4 SSD are sending data to the bus.

The fastest SSD cannot get data on the bus faster than 300MiBps(~293MBps) due to the SATAII interface. Four SSD is not a problem (1142MBps=1.1GBps) but 8 SSD, in a perfect theoretical environment w/ RAID & SAS600 expander, could do 2344MBps or about 2.3GBps and that is well over the saturation point of 1.9GBps for the PCIe2x4 link.

I'm pretty sure that LSI made the 9211-4i with PCIe2x4 for the sub-market of those who have PCIe x4 slot but no x8 available. I think they also assume that anyone willing to spend more than $5000 for 8 SSD, expander and cable(s) is not going to buy the cheapest adapter just to save less than $100! ...

...anyway that's my input on why there is a 9211-4i with PCIe2x4 link when the others are PCIe2x8 link.

...
Since I always use RAID 10|1E & only run RAID 0 or 5-ish for some interim emergency the 9260 is huge overkill and I got the 9211-8i. My 9211-8i should be here next week ... I hope.