My Gigabyte socket 775, DDR2 motherboard never worked right from the day I bought it. Intermittent USB, Firewire, PCI, and Intel Matrix RAID. All symptomatic of a defective Southbridge. I can't say I got a three weeks use in the 19 months I owned it. It died 4 weeks ago, and I've been trying to find an appropriate "home" for my little used E8400, high speed DDR2, and RAID card. I've wasted at least a hundred hours looking for an X38, X48, or SLI board to match my components, with no luck. Sure a precious few are advertised, but they're either out of stock, used, "open box" or the price has been jacked way up.
I bought the board just a month or so before the economy tanked. I think I know now why Gigabyte stalled on replacing it. They never built enough of them to cover customer warranty. At least that's my theory....
So I've been looking at P45. Anyone but me think the industry's advertising is deceptive and misleading? Anyone try to use two PCI-e slots for something other than Crossfire or SLI?
x38 or x48 motherboards are advertised to have two PCI-e x16 slots. You get 16 + 16 = 32 PCI-e lanes, and the corresponding bandwidth.
But a P45 board? They advertise a PCI-e x16 slot and a PCI-e x8 slot. Apparently however, if you put an x8 card in the x8 slot, your x16 slot will be reduced to x8. I.E. 16 + 8 = 16 NOT 24! I don't want my either my x16 video card or x8 RAID card to be starved for bandwidth.
Not only that, but I have tried again and again to get a straight answer from Gigabyte, Asus, etc. as to whether you CAN put something other than another video card in the x8 slot. Does anyone else do this in a P45 card? The only thing the reviews talk about is Crossfire, or SLI.
I bought the board just a month or so before the economy tanked. I think I know now why Gigabyte stalled on replacing it. They never built enough of them to cover customer warranty. At least that's my theory....
So I've been looking at P45. Anyone but me think the industry's advertising is deceptive and misleading? Anyone try to use two PCI-e slots for something other than Crossfire or SLI?
x38 or x48 motherboards are advertised to have two PCI-e x16 slots. You get 16 + 16 = 32 PCI-e lanes, and the corresponding bandwidth.
But a P45 board? They advertise a PCI-e x16 slot and a PCI-e x8 slot. Apparently however, if you put an x8 card in the x8 slot, your x16 slot will be reduced to x8. I.E. 16 + 8 = 16 NOT 24! I don't want my either my x16 video card or x8 RAID card to be starved for bandwidth.
Not only that, but I have tried again and again to get a straight answer from Gigabyte, Asus, etc. as to whether you CAN put something other than another video card in the x8 slot. Does anyone else do this in a P45 card? The only thing the reviews talk about is Crossfire, or SLI.
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