Crossfire A New Card Will Any Lanes Change speed?

[Moddy]

Hey guys I need some help before I make this order. First off, I use 3 monitors, but only 1 to currently game on. I have some spare cash and already have the rest of my PC sorted out to my liking. I currently use 1 XFX 6970, and would like to add another for a performance gain in some of my video games. I am currently using this motherboard:

Asus P8Z68-V Pro
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131730

Currently in the allotted slots, from top to bottom my layout is like this:

PCIE x1 = Killer 2100 Ethernet Card
PCIE 16x = XFX 6970
(Next 1x slot is covered by GPU)
(PCI Slot 1 = nothing
PCIE 16x2 = nothing
PCIE 4x black slot = Creative sound card in 1x mode.

If I add another 6970 to that second PCIE 16x2 slot, will it change any of the lane speeds and cause my sound card to no longer function correctly? It's in the black long 4x slot running at 1x mode.

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I wanna cover all my bases before I spend 360 dollars on another video card that will cause more issues then good.
Any help would be appreciated.

[Milkshake86]

In most cases a second card will drop the second pcie x16 to x8 some motherboards will allow 16x/16x

[Moddy]

The board specifies it will change to 8x 8x, is that the only change that will take place?


It won't take away all the speed from the PCI 4x slot and make it (dead) for example? All my plugged in devices IE: sound card and ethernet card will still function as it currently does?

[Deleted]

Your 6970 will drop to 8x speeds, and your new card will run at that as well. Mid-range intel based chipsets only have 24 PCI-E lanes availible.

End-effect however is trivial.

[Milkshake86]

The board specifies it will change to 8x 8x, is that the only change that will take place?


It won't take away all the speed from the PCI 4x slot and make it (dead) for example? All my plugged in devices IE: sound card and ethernet card will still function as it currently does?

No it only affects the specified lanes. You will likely saturate 8x w/ a single 6970 dont quote me on that

[Sephiracle]

I'm pretty sure GPU's barely saturate the 8x lanes anyways on PCI-E 2.0 so the change down shouldn't negatively effect you at all.