Should I reduce PCI-E from 16x to 8x to obtain SATA III 6GB/s?

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daedal

Gawd
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May 10, 2005
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My motherboard sucks. In order to obtain SATA III 6GB/s I need to reduce my PCI-E 16x lane to 8x.

Having ordered a Vertex 3, I'm having a hard time finding out whether reducing the PCI lane to 8x will adversely affect framerates. All the comparisons and reviews I've found were using old hardware or old games. My PC's in pieces as I'm rebuilding so I can't test it out.

Any ideas whether a 5850HD would use anything above 8x, or am I safe?

Alternatively, I could use the SSD in 3GB/s mode, but I'd be losing roughly 40% of its speed according to the reviews I've read.

Any ideas?
 
You could run the 5850 in 8x with no issues at all, you will suffer a much bigger hit on performance of the SSD dropping from SATA III to SATA II, although it may be transparent to you if you aren't moving large files around. I can't tell the difference between my SATA II and III SSD's for day to day use.
 
LigTasm said:
You could run the 5850 in 8x with no issues at all, you will suffer a much bigger hit on performance of the SSD dropping from SATA III to SATA II, although it may be transparent to you if you aren't moving large files around. I can't tell the difference between my SATA II and III SSD's for day to day use.
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My biggest concern is seeing a noticeable framerate drop. According to some older reviews, the cards back then didn't even max out the 8x line so going from 16x to 8x had little to no effect. I'm not sure if that's still applicable on a 5850HD and Battlefield 3-level games.
 
If your going from PCIE 2.0 16x down to 8x then it would be the same as first gen. 16x so you should be OK...honestly you won't notice the difference going from sata II to III in speed other then benchmarks. I would just leave it at sata II.
 
fps4ever said:
If your going from PCIE 2.0 16x down to 8x then it would be the same as first gen. 16x so you should be OK...honestly you won't notice the difference going from sata II to III in speed other then benchmarks. I would just leave it at sata II.
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Okay, duly noted! In that case, should I bother re-installed Windows on the new Vertex 3 or leave it on the Vertex 2?

Any idea on whether I can swap back and forth between SATA II and III without causing issues by the way? I can't think of why I couldn't, but drives are fickle.
 
You should be able to swap it from II back to III or reversed without issues. Just make sure the bios has the correct boot order for your drives. If your swapping the first time the OS might want to install a different achi sata driver if using an Intel mobo but that's about it...From Marvell to Intel if i remember correctly.
 
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