[andynolife]

I have an old 8600GT collecting dust for quite sometimes, I'm planning to use it for PhysX card, or if it's not sufficient, I'm also looking for an used 8800GT down the road.

But if I'm not mistaken, the UD3P supports x16+x4, so it's perfect for ATi+physX, but I also remeber that if the second x16 slot is used, then the USB3.0/SATA3 is going to be performing slower. So either way, if the 2nd card+USB3.0/SATA3 all share the same PCIe lane, will all of them suffer from a noticiable performance drop? yet, this should not affect my 4890 running at x16, correct?

Should I go this route or just forget about the PhysX and save the brandwidth for the furture usage of USB3.0/SATA3? (I was gonna say future-proof, but I kind of hate this term

)

 

[compuman145]

Question one. Are you going to actually have anything that uses USB3?
Question two. Are you seriously going to fork out over the top prices for a SATA3 drive?

Conclusion. By the time you get a SATA3 drive you would have probably replaced your GPU anyway, I'd say go for it.

 

[Silverlight]

If you have the 8600GT lying around unused and you're not using the USB/SATA 3.0 then you might as well just pop the 8600 in and use it as a PPU. When you DO get a SATA/USB 3.0 see how well it performs with and without the secondary PCIE slot occupied then come to a conclusion whether or not you need to use the 8600 as a PPU

 

[Jocelyn84]

If you use the x16 and the x4, your USB 3.0 will run at non turbo speed, which is half speed and still 5+ times faster than USB 2.0 (2.5Gb/s). It runs off a single PCIe 1.1 lane via the P55 chipset, so no its not going to affect anything performance wise. Just be happy you didn't buy a different brand P55 USB 3.0/Sata III board, as the others use PLX chips. Unlike Gigabyte's USB 3.0/Sata III implementation, they provide no extra DMI bus bandwidth and can bottleneck all kinds of things running of the P55 chipset.

The only way your 4890 will run at X8 is if you run USB 3.0/Sata III with turbo. Otherwise, you get to keep your precious 16 lanes.

 

[andynolife]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jocelyn84 If you use the x16 and the x4, your USB 3.0 will run at non turbo speed, which is half speed and still 5+ times faster than USB 2.0 (2.5Gb/s). It runs off a single PCIe 1.1 lane via the P55 chipset, so no its not going to affect anything performance wise. Just be happy you didn't buy a different brand P55 USB 3.0/Sata III board, as the others use PLX chips. Unlike Gigabyte's USB 3.0/Sata III implementation, they provide no extra DMI bus bandwidth and can bottleneck all kinds of things running of the P55 chipset. The only way your 4890 will run at X8 is if you run USB 3.0/Sata III with turbo. Otherwise, you get to keep your precious 16 lanes.

That's the info I'm looking for! Thanks alot for the input and really appericated everyone who gave a thought!.

So even the USB3.0 runs at non-turbo, the SATA3 will not be affected?
I'm planning to get a SATA3 SSD when there's one, the X25-V is too small and I'm always trying to save space on it.

 

[Jocelyn84]

Quote:

Originally Posted by andynolife That's the info I'm looking for! Thanks alot for the input and really appericated everyone who gave a thought!. So even the USB3.0 runs at non-turbo, the SATA3 will not be affected? I'm planning to get a SATA3 SSD when there's one, the X25-V is too small and I'm always trying to save space on it.

I can only speak for USB 3.0 not, but they both run at PCIe 1.1. I have no idea what that translates into for Sata III.

 

[andynolife]

My apology to bring this back.
Just want to confirm that if I'm in the right track.
If the P55 consists only x8 v1.1 for the PCIe, I maybe wrong, if so please let me know.
Then the x4 is populated by the 8600gt in my case.
and now i'm only left with x4 for the USB3.0 and SATA3, correct? and that is a 250mb/s lane.
So if I'm not intended to use the x4 for any other device. I should be fine if I want to use the USB3.0 in the near future considering 250mb/s should be plenty for USB3.0 devices? and I should still have the 3X higher USB power from gigabyte's design? considering that should not be affected by the pcie lane.