PCIe 8X compared with PCIe 16X, check it out.

"Despite sacrificing the majority of PCI Express lanes offered by the 680i SLI, the cheaper 650i is just as impressive when armed with dual GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards. "

 

So I guess if you have 2 cards running at 8X you may be comparable to one running at 16X ?

The money saved by Dell  on a cheaper mobo should be used to subsidize 2 GeForce 8800 GTX  for customers.

Subsidized 8800GTX, love the idea, only problem would then be the power supply would have to be changed, the 630i's only has 2 x 6 pin connectors and I'm not sure on this but I think nVidia reccomend a 1000w PSU for duel 8800GTX's.

 

Still a beautiful idea.

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@korrson wrote:

"Despite sacrificing the majority of PCI Express lanes offered by the 680i SLI, the cheaper 650i is just as impressive when armed with dual GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards. "

 

So I guess if you have 2 cards running at 8X you may be comparable to one running at 16X ?

 

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This is not what the testing showed. 

 

Instead the testing indicates that two GPUs running in SLI post essentially indentical results when installed in a 650 MoBo running PCIe at x8 versus a 680 MoBo running PCIe at x16.

 

Expanding on this, testing by Tom's Hardware showed that even with a dual GPU, a single x16 physical sized slot running at x8 instead of x16 generally makes little difference.

 

This is because GPUs are unable to utilize the tremendous bandwidth of an x16 bus. This level of bandwidth can only begin to be used by high speed hardwired networking and RAID controllers in servers.

 

It would have been nice however to have a cardswitch (as noted above).

Nice link and a good read. But if I may, the reason many people consider the mobo in the 630 as being crippled as you put it, is because on many retail boards there is a cardswitch which will allow the user to select 16 lanes whilst using a single graphics card, and as you know the mobo supplied has been hardwired to only be able to ever have 8 lanes, not so bad for those using SLI but a waste of 8 lanes for those who do not. Admitted, the difference between x8 and x16 is not that much now, but with ever increasing demands being made by newer graphics cards this could well be a major hindrence.

billybigfoot,

     Thanks and well put. Crippled reflects the lack of ability of the chipset due to Dell's implementation choice. 'nuf said.

Sean

Nice catch saxon68! :smileytongue:

 

"Found this website, looks like the 630i is not as crippled as people think.."

 

http://www.techspot.com/review/45-nvidia-nforce-650i-sli-vs-680i-sli/

 

filtering comments from the peanut gallery