Any difference between 680i and P35 with 1 graphic card?

Thanks for the reply as it's confusing. Reading about the P35 you
would think the bandwidth is lower for the PCI-E x16 than with the
680i, however perhaps that's just when running in Crossfire mode as
opposed to SLI mode between the chipsets that the P35 bandwidth/lanes
is lower.
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JR wrote:
> Thanks for the reply as it's confusing. Reading about the P35 you
> would think the bandwidth is lower for the PCI-E x16 than with the
> 680i, however perhaps that's just when running in Crossfire mode as
> opposed to SLI mode between the chipsets that the P35 bandwidth/lanes
> is lower.
>

680i has x16/x16 for two video card slots. Which means when one card
is plugged in, it gets x16 as expected.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/nforce_600i_tech_specs.html

P35 has x16 on Northbridge and x6 on Southbridge. Four of the six lanes
on the Southbridge can be bonded together, to make a x4 set of lanes.
Thus, a P35 motherboard, with two video slots and no additional design
details, would be x16/x4. When only one video card is plugged in, that
card would get the x16.

There is one Asus P35 based motherboard, with an extra chip. Instead of
using the Southbridge option, it uses a PCI Express switch chip and the
Northbridge interface. The PCI Express chip can either direct x16 to one
slot (as normal) or can distribute the lanes x8/x8 for two video cards.
In a sense, that motherboard is doing something roughly equivalent to
A8N-SLI Premium.

In all three scenarios listed above, a single video card is capable of
getting a video slot with x16 lane wiring, so in that sense they are
equal.

There can also be other bottlenecks in the system, that prevent the
full bandwidth from being achieved, but probably not a limitation
with only one video card.

Paul
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