Intel P35 chipset + newest GPUs

Discussion in 'Building a new PC' started by Teddyhead, Oct 10, 2011.

  1. Teddyhead

    Teddyhead Member

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    Hi,

    I'm about to build a low-cost rig for GPGPU usage. I wonder, if motherboards with Intel P35 chipset (which has PCIe 1.1 bus) are able to host the newest PCIe 2.1 GPUs?

    For example: ASUS 6950 DCII gpu + ASUS P5K motherboard. Compatible?
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2011
    Teddyhead, Oct 10, 2011
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  2. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    They will work, just with some small performance losses. For GPGPU you should hardly notice it. Just be careful nothing you're running is CPU-bound, if you've an old slow Core 2 Duo or Pentium D in there, you'll very easily bottleneck such a powerful graphics card.
     
    sammorris, Oct 12, 2011
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  3. Teddyhead

    Teddyhead Member

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    Ok, thanks. How about using the PCIe x4 port for another GPU? Would it bottleneck GPGPU computing?
     
    Teddyhead, Oct 12, 2011
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  4. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    For PCIe x1, yes it will. How much depends on the GPU, and the task, but you may see 20-40% drops in performance using that interface.
     
    sammorris, Oct 12, 2011
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  5. Teddyhead

    Teddyhead Member

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    The Asus P5K seems to have 2 x PCIe x16 ports (blue @ x16 mode, black @ x4 or x1 mode). How do you determine whether it's using x4 or x1 mode?
     
    Teddyhead, Oct 12, 2011
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  6. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    As far as I can tell that just means it is designed to be used with 4x or 1x cards, and it will run at 4x whenever you put a 16x card in there. If it is genuinely 1x, then that's obviously even worse.
     
    sammorris, Oct 12, 2011
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