PCI-E & SLI Question

A

Aslander

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 16, 2005
Messages
181
Okay I have a question, my motherboard was meant for SLI, and I just recently put two 7900GT's in it, however I was looking up some info on my motherboard and noticed the site said this:
• One PCI Express X16 slot (supports PCI Express Bus specification v1.0a compliant)
• One PCI Express X4 slot (supports PCI Express Bus specification v1.0a compliant)
• One PCI Express X1 slot (supports PCI Express Bus specification v1.0a compliant)

I have a MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI--do I need to buy a new board with two X16 slots? My cards are both X16 and I'm wondering if this is why some games give me a flickering screen (like if the refresh rate for the monitor was wrong, but Im using an LCD)
 
Im baffled too..

MS-7125.jpg


^^ Thats the picture of the "sli" motherboard that hes talking about.

How does that work?? My MSi board looks like this:

MSI-K8N%20SLI-F.jpg


^^Notice the 2 x16 slots?
 


^^^ that is what you was suppost to have^^^


I think they sent you the wrong board. Clearly you can see that the 2nd PCI-e x16/x8 slot isnt there.
 
Yeah, this is what your mobo should look like. I suppose it's time to call the company you ordered it from.
 
ReDgUaRd008 said:
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^^^ that is what you was suppost to have^^^


I think they sent you the wrong board. Clearly you can see that the 2nd PCI-e x16/x8 slot isnt there.
Click to expand...

Yup,

This is what its supposed to look like..

MS-7100.jpg
 
That picture is wrong, it does have the correct number of PCI-E slots.

Now, back to my question.... do I need to ditch this and get a board with two X16 slots or does 1 x16 and 1 x4 slot work the same (according to my first post where i got the info from their website)
 
It's either run 16x or 8x times two. If you have the PCIe32 mobos it's again 32x1 or 16x2. You can run your GTs without problems on the 8x2 IF your mobo is actually a SLI mobo, as long as it's not the picture that you posted. The GTs aren't going to max out the 16 lanes and it seems like you have some other problems.
 
Aslander said:
That picture is wrong, it does have the correct number of PCI-E slots.

Now, back to my question.... do I need to ditch this and get a board with two X16 slots or does 1 x16 and 1 x4 slot work the same (according to my first post where i got the info from their website)
Click to expand...

Unless you can find a card that is made for your pci-e x4 slot then no.
You got the wrong motherboard... that one is the non-sli version.

Which picture is wrong?
Does your motherboard have 2 LONG pci slots (like in my last post) or does it have one long and one short?
 
Well, I have the two 7900GTs plugged in and they do work. When I show the load balancing the bars are equal when I play games.

My 3DMark05 score went from 7050 to 9600 when I switched from a 7800GT to two 7900GT.

It's sorta misleading if this board isn't really a good board for SLI since the box says SLI ready and it was an expensive board when I bought it 6 months ago.
 
Aslander said:
Well, I have the two 7900GTs plugged in and they do work. When I show the load balancing the bars are equal when I play games.

My 3DMark05 score went from 7050 to 9600 when I switched from a 7800GT to two 7900GT.

It's sorta misleading if this board isn't really a good board for SLI since the box says SLI ready and it was an expensive board when I bought it 6 months ago.
Click to expand...

Ok, that makes absolutely no sense. Why don't you install and run this:
http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-134.zip
and tell us what it says for mainboard information.
 
eh hold on, that website is wrong, thats the same motherboard but mine has the SLI at the end. its a MS-7100, lemme see if I can find something else with the info on this board.
 
Aslander said:
Well, I have the two 7900GTs plugged in and they do work. When I show the load balancing the bars are equal when I play games.

My 3DMark05 score went from 7050 to 9600 when I switched from a 7800GT to two 7900GT.

It's sorta misleading if this board isn't really a good board for SLI since the box says SLI ready and it was an expensive board when I bought it 6 months ago.
Click to expand...

How you got the 2nd 7900 to plug into the x4 slot and working is beyond me. But i guess someone put it in the wrong box.
 
Okay that was what was confusing me, this website says I have two x16 slots:

http://www.directron.com/k8nneo4sli.html

----------

Now, what might be causing flickering lines on my LCD screen in a couple games--BF2 plays fine, but GRAW, Silent Hill 3, Warcraft 3 all give me flickering lines and if I alt-tab it usually fixes it.

Ive updated the BIOS, newest grphx drivers (also tried an older popular version). ATITool showed no artifacts.

Also: I just ran 3DMark06 and came back with a 4838--is this right for my setup:

AMD Athlon 64 Venice 3000+ (no oc)
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI
OCZ Platinum PC3200 2gb
2 XFX 7900GT Extreme
WD Caviar SATA2
 
Further clarification on 3DMark06:

4838 3DMark06
SM2.0 Score: 2521
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 3000
CPU Score: 719
 
Also the Nvidia software under the display settings is showing the PCI-E bus as 8x--is that because its 16x divided by 2?
 
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