Week 2 Posting - Motherboard PCIE Slots

     

Motherboard PCIE Slots

    While researching ATX motherboard specifications, I came across various PCIEx16, x8, and x4 configurations built into the boards. I noticed the manufacturers briefly mention the slots existence, but without marketing the performance capabilities or use purposes for it. PCIEx16 slots are the go-to slot when installing a graphics processing unit (GPU), but the lower slots are frequently unpopulated. These slots often come in x4 and x8 designs meaning they have 4 or 8 data lanes available, respectively. While they look similar in size, they are quite different in output compared with the x16. 

    Some gaming and streaming builds may utilize these slots for a small additional graphics card. This can provide output to other monitors or television screens. Some software such as NVIDIAs SLI can provide resources from both GPUs for gaming purposes. This is an example of a situation where the X16 GPU will likely control the x8 or x4 slot GPU (Glawion, 2022). This, however, does not constitute doubling the performance as one might think. Games will need to support SLI, and often times they do not. NVIDIA has released newer products as technology continues to grow and is continuing efforts with the NVlink software which can "let data move five to twelve times faster than they can today" (Gupta, 2016). This technology has been growing and rolled out on the recent RTX 3090 GPUs. Other use cases for these slots range from high performance network adapters, hard drive expansion cards, and SATA expansion cards. 

 
 

 
 

 

 

References: 

Glawion, A. (2022, May 9). NVlink vs. SLI and multiple gpus - is it worth it? CG Director. Retrieved September 11, 2022, from https://www.cgdirector.com/nvlink-vs-sli/ 

Gupta, S. (2016, January 22). What is NVlink?: Nvidia Official Blog. NVIDIA Blog. Retrieved September 11, 2022, from https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/11/14/what-is-nvlink/