{"id":30825,"date":"2012-07-18T05:16:35","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T04:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=30825"},"modified":"2012-07-22T01:48:37","modified_gmt":"2012-07-22T00:48:37","slug":"can-an-overclocked-gtx-690-be-bottlenecked-by-pcie-3-0-or-pcie-2-0-x16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/can-an-overclocked-gtx-690-be-bottlenecked-by-pcie-3-0-or-pcie-2-0-x16\/","title":{"rendered":"Can An Overclocked GTX 690 be bottlenecked by PCIe 3.0 X8 or PCIe 2.0 X16 ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\n                                                                          google_ad_client = \"pub-7021221536180758\"; \/* 468x60, created 11\/11\/09 *\/ google_ad_slot = \"1949837292\"; google_ad_width = 468; google_ad_height = 60;\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>We tested\u00a0using\u00a0Core i7-3770K at 4.6GHz\u00a0and\u00a0overclocked\u00a0the GTX 690\u00a0that was\u00a0used for\u00a0this week&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=30448&amp;all=1\">complete platform upgrade<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 We cannot give you an exact answer to this question although we do have some interesting data.\u00a0 The GTX 690 is the fastest video card in the world and it is\u00a0ideal for\u00a0exploring\u00a0potential\u00a0bandwidth limitations using our ECS Z77H2-A2X Golden Series Motherboard.<a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/GeForce_GTX_690_3qtr-300x237.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/GeForce_GTX_690_3qtr.jpg?resize=300%2C237\" alt=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We used even <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=30448&amp;page=5\">more demanding settings than in our platform upgrade evaluation<\/a> as we overclocked our GTX 690 as far as\u00a0it could go, to +132%, +150MHz core, and +550MHz memory over reference clocks.\u00a0 Our Core i7-3770K is also overclocked to 4.6GHz, and our 4GB of Kingston HyperX\u00a0DDR3 is at 1866MHz.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/WaterCooled-GTX.jpg?resize=360%2C329\" alt=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>One of Ivy Bridge&#8217;s advantages over older CPU architecture\u00a0is PCIe 3.0, and there are 16 total lanes of PCIe 2.0 bandwidth available for graphics cards.\u00a0 PCIe 3.0 is an improvement over PCIe 2.0, including more efficient signaling.\u00a0 According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_3.0\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_3.0', 'Wikipedia']);\" >Wikipedia<\/a>, &#8220;PCIe 2.0 delivers 5 GT\/s, but uses an 8b\/10b encoding scheme that results in a 20 percent ((10-8)\/10) overhead on the raw bit rate. PCIe 3.0 removes the requirement for 8b\/10b encoding.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It is considered that PCIe 2.0 16x is approximately equal to PCIe 3.0 8x bandwidth.\u00a0 Well the GTX 690 is the single fastest video card in the world and this experiment is to see if it can use more than the bandwidth that 8x PCIe 3.0 can provide it.\u00a0\u00a0Our benchmarks might\u00a0also relate to how\u00a0an overclocked GTX 690 might perform\u00a0perform in the x16 slot\u00a0in an older PCIe 2.0 motherboard, but don&#8217;t read too much into them without further testing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/MB-3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/MB-3.jpg?resize=360%2C361\" alt=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>In the case of the ECS motherboard, the primary slot is X16 &#8211; it uses nearly\u00a0the full bandwidth available to\u00a0it unless there is a second video card installed in the second slot.\u00a0 In this case, both cards share the bandwith and each one has the bandwidth of 8x PCIe 3.0 available.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0However,\u00a0the secondary slot is X16_S, which means it is X8 PCIe 3.0 bandwidth whether there is one video card in the other primary slot or not.\u00a0 So it was an easy test to simply move our overclocked GTX 690 from the primary (X16) slot to the secondary (X8)\u00a0slot \u00a0and record the performance in the benchmarks.<\/p>\n<p>Well, we were surprised!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Cht.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-30826\" title=\"Cht\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Cht.jpg?resize=512%2C385\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Cht.jpg?resize=512%2C385 640w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Cht-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It appears that in every case, using the top PCIe 3.0\u00a0X16 slot in the ECS Z77H2-A2X motherboard, is faster than using the second X16_S slot.\u00a0 This is about as far as we can take our testing with this\u00a0motherboard as there is no other video card other than the GTX 690 which can do this.\u00a0\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-30833\" title=\"evgamb\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/evgamb.jpg?resize=300%2C270\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/evgamb.jpg?resize=300%2C270 300w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/evgamb.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Fortunately we received an EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard\u00a0for evaluation and we will continue to explore PCIe scaling in a follow-up.\u00a0 In the meantime, feel free to discuss this on our forum or leave a comment below.\u00a0 New this week, ABT will bring\u00a0you the best of the tech news on a regular basis and you can expect a Thermaltake\u00a0Overseer RX-I full tower evaluation this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Happy\u00a0gaming!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Please join us in our <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/abt\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">Forums<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Become a Fan on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/AlienBabelTech\/123268467142\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/AlienBabelTech\/123268467142', 'Facebook']);\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Follow us on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech', 'Twitter']);\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the latest updates from ABT, please <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?feed=rss2\" target=\"_blank\">join our RSS News Feed<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Join our Distributed Computing teams<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Folding@Home &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech &#8211; 164304<\/li>\n<li>SETI@Home &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech &#8211; 138705<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcommunitygrid.org\/reg\/viewRegister.do?teamID=3P39R3SRV1\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.worldcommunitygrid.org\/reg\/viewRegister.do?teamID=3P39R3SRV1', 'World Community Grid &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech']);\" target=\"_blank\">World Community Grid &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We tested\u00a0using\u00a0Core i7-3770K at 4.6GHz\u00a0and\u00a0overclocked\u00a0the GTX 690\u00a0that was\u00a0used for\u00a0this week&#8217;s\u00a0complete platform upgrade.\u00a0\u00a0 We cannot give you an exact answer to this question although we do have some interesting data.\u00a0 The GTX 690 is the&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":30835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4454,3228],"tags":[5202,5361,5360,5359,5358],"class_list":["post-30825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","category-mini-reviews","category-rumors","tag-gtx-690","tag-insuffient-bandwidth","tag-pcie-2-0-x16","tag-pcie-3-0-x16","tag-pcie-3-0-x8"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}