Anybody with experience in pci riser cards?

[julianb]

Hi all,
I am about to order two GTX 480 AMP Editions. Only problem is each of them takes 3 PCI slots on the motherboard (due to their after market fans)and I will need one more video card for smooth work within Windows. Currently I can only stick two GTX 480's on my motherboard before all the PCI slots are taken. I was wondering if I can buy a pci riser card and use it for connecting the third video card to the motherboard.
I am not so much concerned about the layout in the PC case as much as I am concerned about possible drawbacks of using a pci riser card- could there be loss of rendering speed. Should I be on a lookout for specific parameters the pci riser card must have - interface, bandwidth and others.
I just don't want to have to buy a new motherboard with 6-8 PCI slots just to fit the new cards.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[acc24ex]

[julianb]

Yes, that is indeed what I am talking about.
Any idea if using it could lead to decrease in GPU speeds? Or it is only an extension and nothing more and whatever the throughput of the GPU is it will stay the same?

Thanks.

[acc24ex]

just buy it,
I wasn't aware of the riser cards, but that's what gpux expander probably does, so it seems perfectly safe, it just extends the wiring, I'll get one for sure if I see it in a local store somewhere. I have three pcix ports and ofcourse I can't use the middle one because it's single slot size, and I have three double slot gpus. The only question is how to securely attach it I guess. But from the looks of it, there is nothing to this it's just extending the range..

[julianb]

Thanks a lot, man. Well i guess that settles it-riser card it is.

[jbeau3d]

Please let us know how everything worked out by adding the riser. I've been thinking about doing the same thing.

[kivig]

Please let us know how everything worked out by adding the riser. I've been thinking about doing the same thing.

Ditto