Browsing the forums, I noticed that some posters still thought that 8x/8x neutered videocard performance compared to the full fledged 16x/16x, which of course Socket 1366 setup offers.
Just a quick reminder, the PCIe 2.0 8x/8x vs. PCIe 2.0 16x/16x was already shown to be pretty immaterial. I specifically like the analysis performed by TechPowerup found here, where they found the performance difference between x8 2.0 and x16 2.0 was about 1-2%. Alternatively, HardOCP even investigated this at higher resolutions (busydude, thanks for the link).
LegitReviews has just ran a comparison of two P67 boards, which included HD6950s in Crossfire. The findings were definitely not what I had expected.
Asus P8P67 = 16x/4x
Asus P8P67 Deluxe = 8x/8x
Benchmarks
Source.
How can this be? My 2 cents:
The new Intel P67 chipsets have proper full PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth, doubling the data throughput available compared to what was available on P55. This means PCIe 2.0 4x on P67 should be equal to PCIe 1.0 8x on P55 (feel free to correct me here). Perhaps, this is why we seeing such a small performance drop. The other possibility is that HD6950 is just not fast enough and/or those games aren't demanding enough at 1920x1080 to saturate the bandwidth.
In any case, PCIe 2.0 8x/8x on P67 should definitely be a non-issue for those planning to upgrade.
Just a quick reminder, the PCIe 2.0 8x/8x vs. PCIe 2.0 16x/16x was already shown to be pretty immaterial. I specifically like the analysis performed by TechPowerup found here, where they found the performance difference between x8 2.0 and x16 2.0 was about 1-2%. Alternatively, HardOCP even investigated this at higher resolutions (busydude, thanks for the link).
LegitReviews has just ran a comparison of two P67 boards, which included HD6950s in Crossfire. The findings were definitely not what I had expected.
Asus P8P67 = 16x/4x
Asus P8P67 Deluxe = 8x/8x
Benchmarks
Source.
How can this be? My 2 cents:
The new Intel P67 chipsets have proper full PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth, doubling the data throughput available compared to what was available on P55. This means PCIe 2.0 4x on P67 should be equal to PCIe 1.0 8x on P55 (feel free to correct me here). Perhaps, this is why we seeing such a small performance drop. The other possibility is that HD6950 is just not fast enough and/or those games aren't demanding enough at 1920x1080 to saturate the bandwidth.
In any case, PCIe 2.0 8x/8x on P67 should definitely be a non-issue for those planning to upgrade.