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**Paul[_28_]** · May 6th 19, 04:37 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt

wrote:
Hmm it seems to be a winfast motherboard limitation, which I find kinda odd, in the manual at page 27 it says the following:

"In normal mode, only the PCI Express x16 slot near the CPU can be used for PCI Express x16 graphics cards."

So strangely enough this motherboard DOES support SLI... but when in "normal mode" it can only support one graphics card ?!

Why the hell would that be ?!

So weird ?!

Well this summer I plan to build a new computer... waiting for computex and ryzen 3 announcement... and then some analysis... hopefully it gonna be good.

Now that my widescreen monitor/dvi died and I am enjoying this vga monitor...

I could unplug the gt 1030 and instead use the GT 520... since the GT 520 does have vga connector and hdmi too...

So I could re-use the HDMI for HDMI output to see if it makes a difference when gaming compared to creative labs soundblaster.

I find that experiment kinda interesting... not much point cause I do play on low audio in wows... but still even with low audio some difference might be noticeable.

I think it's the CPU that mostly bottlenecks WOWS (world of warships) and not graphics cards... though I could be wrong... probably both bottlenecking a bit...

But not that much difference between a gt 520 and gt 1030... though it was also worth an experiment...

Brutal Doom runs really sweet on the GT 1030 though =D

Bye for now,
Skybuck.

P.S.: Have to do some re-building lol.

You have a paddlecard motherboard (NF4SK8AA)

The very end of your manual, has an appendix showing
the paddlecard between the two video slots.

If you have two video cards plugged in, the paddle
card should be in SLI mode. That ensures each card
receives x8 of lanes. That's the x8/x8 mode but
is also known as "SLI mode".

Actual SLI requires one of two things to complete
the installation.

1) A ribbon cable that runs between two similar cards.
This is the old way of doing card-to-card communication.

2) A method that came out later after the invention
of SLI, was "PCI Express slot to PCI Express slot"
communications via the chipset bridge. One card
would in effect become a bus master and "talk" to
the other card. I presume the chipset has to
decode these accesses properly, for the two cards
to address one another.

If you don't do (1) on your system, it's quite
possible that SLI won't happen in that case,
because (2) is missing.

*******

Make sure the paddlecard is in "SLI" mode, then
power the system back on and try again.

Use anti-static precautions when working with the
paddlecard (wrist strap). At the very least, bring
yourself to the same electrostatic potential as
the computer case, before flipping the paddlecard
around and back into its socket.

Paul