Yes wrote:
Considering that some of the graphics cards I've seen pictured these
days use two of the backplate slots to mount the card, have any
motherboard manufacturers started offering mobos that are specifically
desigend to accomodate two such cards.

When I look at those graphics cards, it just seems like they would
cover up so much of the motherboard that even having a lot of PCI-e
slots is wasted and if one had two graphics cards, it'd be even more
so. So I'm wondering if mfrs have begun selling specialized mobos
catering to the crowd that wants to use say one or two graphics cards
and at the trade-off of pci-e slots for other uses. Are there any
buzzwords or special marketing phrases the mfrs use to identify such a
restricted use mobo?

Thanks,

John

Various platforms have different wiring patterns for slots.

Even if all the motherboard slots look like PCIe x16,
they can be wired x1, x4, x8, x16. Some users are
not overjoyed to find their "SLI lookin" motherboard,
has x16 for the video slot nearest the processor and
x4 for the second large PCI Express slot. Even though
both connectors are the same size, they don't have
identical wiring. A PCIe slot can work if wires are
missing (this even helps if there is a lane failure
and you don't even know it has happened).

An LGA1151 would be x16 and x4.

An LGA2011 would have a total of 28 to 44 lanes
with the possibility of more (real) x16 slots.

So while you can admire pictures of products, you
really need to download the user manual and find
the "plain truth" chapter that gives all the population
rules. It will tell you how the slots are wired, and
what slimy thing they did to save a buck or two.

Excess slots today are replaced with NVMe, as Vanguard mentions.
And there are also interactions between those slots and
maybe one or two of the SATA connectors or Express connectors.

The end result, is a small nightmare in the manual, as you figure
out whether the motherboard is a "good deal" or not. For example,
if you put a 28 lane LGA2011 processor in a motherboard, chances
are good one PCIe x16 doesn't work at all (no wires fed by the
processor).

While I think NVMe are "cool" to have, I'm not willing
to compromise my setups on half-assed slot configurations.
YMMV of course. Gimme seven slots and let me choose what
to stick in them. Just about every computer I've ever
had, has been full of cards, because I like "addons" as
new stuff shows up. The latest card being an USB3.1 Rev2
card for an older computer. In addition to the
USB3.0 card it had as well. If a fun toy is available
for the right price, I'm not adverse to building up
my junk room contents.

Just for the record, SLI or Crossfire aren't the best deal
in the world. They don't exactly double performance, and
some titles perform relatively poorly that way. Perhaps
a time you might need something like that, is if you
had a VR headset and it needed "mighty horsepower" to work.
But for gaming, you should be able to snag a single card
with sufficient horsepower for a decent gaming session.
Buying a couple 7300LE and slapping that SLI ribbon
on them, is delusional :-/ Either you have the money
to game properly... or you don't. Buying a couple
7300LE doesn't make you a gamer. You'll only get an
extra 3FPS in the SIMS doing that.

Having said that, you can imagine what my opinion is
of builds with three or four massive video cards installed.
That's OK if you're cracking passwords or mining Ethereum
or something, but that's a giant waste for gaming. People
who have that kind of money to spend, do benchmarks
all day long.

Paul