I'm really sorry if this is the wrong SE site to ask this question on (Please point me in the right direction!)
I've purchased the following components for my computer:
- motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131819
- CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501
- GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162109
I already have things like 16gigs of DDR3 ram, 7xxx RPM harddrive (no ssd at this point...), etc.
The GPU I'm ordering is higher-ish-end (There's only a couple from nvidia that are better than it, and they quickly jump in price to $500 and $1000).
My real question is... how much of a performance boost am I likely to see in the newest graphic-intensive games if I were to add a 2nd identical GPU to the configuration using SLI?
Would a 2nd GPU give a noticeable difference? Would I be bottlenecked in other areas instead (like CPU processing power)?
The motherboard states the following:
PCI Express 3.0 x16: 2 (x16/0 or x8/x8)
PCI Express 2.0 x16: 1 (@x4)
PCI Express x1 : 2
PCI Slots : 2
I'm going to be completely honest and say that I'm not very familiar with the purpose of so many different PCI slots. I couldn't find any motherboards that had two PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots (x16/x16), so if I add a 2nd GPU am I just going to be cutting the allotted bandwidth for each one in half? Will that effectively give me the graphic capabilities of only a single card?
If you can add to your explanation the effects of the different types of PCI slots (And what 3.0
means as opposed to x16
, x8
, x4
, and x1
) as well as a general explanation of how SLI causes the GPU's to work together and how much of a boost it provides (certainly not 100% more, is it 80%? 50%? 20%?).