say if u had a motherboard with 2 x pci-x ports for sli, is it possible to only use one graphics card and use the other slot for say a graphics accelerator/sound card/tv tuner?
can sli pci-x's be used as normal
Why not? The graphics cards require an extra connector between them, they don't use the PCIe bus to communicate with echother.
Last edited by ocalhoun on Thu Jun 01, 2006 8:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
Last edited by ocalhoun on Thu Jun 01, 2006 8:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
You can use only one card if you want, but the other slot is a PCIe slot, not a PCI slot, so the answer is no, you wouldn't be able to use it for another pci device because it is a different bus
You could however use it for a new pci-e 16x sound card or another non-sli video card. I have seen a few people do this, though I see no point in it. There aren't many pci-e 16x card out for anything but video anyways, so don't bother.
Just to clarify because I know people get confused about this (correct me if I'm wrong on any of this 
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PCI expansion slots are the oldest of the group, and used for things like sound cards, expansion cards, and earlier in it's life video cards. I think it's maximum transfer rate is 133 MB/s
PCI-X is (i believe) a 64 bit version of the PCI bus used almost entirely in the server world.
PCIe or PCI Express is the next gen slot/bus replacing both PCI and AGP, the slots come in various flavors, extending up to a 16x slot, mainly used for video cards. Some motherboards come with 4x or 1x slots also. The slots are essentially interchangeable, unless the device requires a certain bus speed, so you could in theory put anything in that other 16x slot as long as it's PCIe. PCIe cards (other than video cards) aren't yet mainstream (ie they're expensive and hard to find)
PCIe is not backward compatible with PCI or PCI-X
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PCI expansion slots are the oldest of the group, and used for things like sound cards, expansion cards, and earlier in it's life video cards. I think it's maximum transfer rate is 133 MB/s
PCI-X is (i believe) a 64 bit version of the PCI bus used almost entirely in the server world.
PCIe or PCI Express is the next gen slot/bus replacing both PCI and AGP, the slots come in various flavors, extending up to a 16x slot, mainly used for video cards. Some motherboards come with 4x or 1x slots also. The slots are essentially interchangeable, unless the device requires a certain bus speed, so you could in theory put anything in that other 16x slot as long as it's PCIe. PCIe cards (other than video cards) aren't yet mainstream (ie they're expensive and hard to find)
PCIe is not backward compatible with PCI or PCI-X
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