PCI Express x4 vs x16

[RobSteady]

Hi,

I've got this mainboard
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/produc ... id=3765#sp
and one pci express x4 slot free. Can I buy a GTX 580 and move my 560 ti to the x4 slot to use it for the viewport?
Or do I get performance loss and should buy a new Mainboard?

Rob

[tonycho]

Hi Rob,
I think it can,
But i dont know about the performance for display

If that slot use for rendering
The render speed is same but the time for upload the scene is slower
For example if in x16 is 1 sec
X8 is 2 sec
X4 is 4 sec

Sorry for bad English

Regards
Antonius

[RobSteady]

Hi tony, but when the setup is like this it should be faster?

gtx 580 @ x16 for rendering
gtx 560ti @ x4 for display and viewport navigation

Anyone knows if the viewport in 3ds max is slower then?

[mib2berlin]

Hi RobSteady, you can put the 580 in the 4x slot as regular loading times are miliseconds.
So it is 2 to 8 miliseconds and you realize it may on very big scenes loading but not during working with octane.
PCIe 2.0 x4 pushes 2 GB per second to the card, calculate yourself.
On the other side, test it!

Cheers, mib.

[RobSteady]

Thanks mib! Ordering the 580 right now

Little off topic, but could anyone tell me how much power supply I need for the 560 ti and the 580 together?
Right now I think I have 580 W.


Thanks



Rob

[steveps3]

I have 3 x 560 ti's running off of a 850 watt PSU. for the 2 cards you could get away with a 650 depending on what else you were running. My system is pretty bare bones. 3 GPUs are the only cards in it. I have 1 SSD and a SATA drive.


Hope that helps.