64
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to connect an external GPU via Ethernet?
No.
Chances are very slim that your laptop has a 10 gigabit ethernet adaptor - its uncommon on high end desktops. You'd also need some clever hardware to translate between PCI-e to ethernet, and the ...
- 130k
59
votes
GPU struggles only in the primary PCIe slot. Is this a motherboard issue?
If the GPU is using legacy interrupts for some reason, it may be suffering from high latency while the CPU is busy handling other interrupt handlers for that IRQ.
Your motherboard's user manual ...
- 1,283
45
votes
Accepted
How do PCIe to SATA expansion cards work, and does my PC support them?
There are four basic "levels" of adding more SATA ports:
A USB-SATA adapter is cheap and easy, and quite fast with modern UASP (USB-attached-SCSI) support. However, they may not be good long-term as ...
- 62k
45
votes
Accepted
Motherboard says PCIe 3.0, but chipset only supports PCIe 2.0. Who's right?
Your CPU has 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes: Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2620 v4
The communications with your GPUs will be direct from your CPU. This is good, after all the memory controller is also integrated on ...
- 93.8k
32
votes
Accepted
Why is NVMe better than ATA?
While I can't find the references anymore, the one specific difference I remember is that NVMe was designed to be highly parallel. I might be misremembering this, but:
ATA via legacy IDE had no ...
- 465k
22
votes
Accepted
Where does PCI-E link-width negotiation occur?
It's done at the electrical level, not by software. The two registers you've listed above, LNK_CAP and LNK_STA are what you correctly noted as 'Here's what the link is capable of' and 'Here the ...
- 643
21
votes
What would happen if you put multiple PCIe cards in one PCIe slot?
The computer would most likely not boot. It might short out.
See, a PCI x4 slot is not four as large as an x1 slot.
All PCI-e connectors have a shared layout: The first 18 pairs of connectors are ...
- 65.3k
20
votes
Accepted
What would happen if you put multiple PCIe cards in one PCIe slot?
Nothing... The PCIE key slot would prevent a card being inserted anywhere except the front of the bus. Therefore, only one card can be entered in a slot at a time. If you were to remove the key, you ...
- 1,289
18
votes
Is it possible to connect an external GPU via Ethernet?
Connecting a GPU by Ethernet is like connecting your PS3 controller to the PS/2 keyboard port: sounds like it's trying to fix a problem but the solution turns out to be completely outlandish and ...
- 4,272
16
votes
Accepted
Why does disabling active power management in BIOS double NVMe speed?
ASPM is a power management system that turns off the PCIe link to save power. The result is that while you may save power it can actively harm performance.
From Wikipedia Active State Power Management ...
- 93.8k
13
votes
How do PCIe to SATA expansion cards work, and does my PC support them?
I've recently been looking into getting a PCIe to SATA expansion card, otherwise known as a port multiplier, because I no longer have any free SATA ports on my system, but I'm confused about how ...
- 43.1k
13
votes
Accepted
Can I insert an M.2 SSD with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 to a PCI-Express 2.0
Yes, but it won't be as fast as advertised.
The PCI Express standards mandate proper down-negotiation of the exact PCI Express version being used on any given link to the maximum version supported by ...
- 9,891
12
votes
How to tell what version of PCI Express slot your system has?
HWiNFO has more reliable detection than CPUID.
For example, on my system CPUID wasn't able to detect PCI-E revision, but HWINFO was.
- 1,345
10
votes
Is it possible to connect an external GPU via Ethernet?
Probably not at commodity pricing for another few years. The current offerings are all high-end, using 10/40 Gbps connections and Nvidia Tesla cards. Even then, it's not directly usable for gaming ...
- 231
9
votes
Can I insert an M.2 SSD with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 to a PCI-Express 2.0
As noted in another answer, PCI express will automatically train to the highest mutually supported speed regardless of which version is at each end of the link (via the speed advertisement field in ...
- 726
9
votes
Accepted
Using a PCIe 4.0 GPU on a PCIe 3.0 motherboard
After a quick Google search, I found this article which explains that:
a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot can theoretically hit approximately 32 gigabytes
per second (GB/s) of data flowing in each direction, while ...
- 343
9
votes
Accepted
Linux will not recognize Thunderbolt 3 (Titan Ridge) card on Supermicro motherboard
There are many guides online for issues like these, but a lot of them are outdated, so hopefully, this is helpful for people encountering this issue in >= 2021. These instructions were tested on ...
- 451
9
votes
Accepted
Is there a way to identify the PCIE Speed for a device using powershell (Win10)?
This method uses the WMI Bus PnP device driver properties
# Get all devices related to PCI BUS
$pciStats = (Get-WMIObject Win32_Bus -Filter 'DeviceID like "PCI%"').GetRelated('...
- 8,467
8
votes
Accepted
How to understand lspci tree format?
Why the tree output shows that all the devices connect to the same PCI bus(bus 00)?
Because that's how PCIe structure works: All devices are connected to a single root node. (Though you can have ...
- 17k
8
votes
What does PCIe Gen3x4 means
Generally, when referring to PCI Express specifications, the "x" in the term signifies the number of lanes.
In your example, PCIe Gen3x4 should be interpreted as PCI Express, Generation 3, using 4 ...
- 2,814
8
votes
Accepted
NVMe vs PCIe SSD : Are they same?
No they aren't the same. NVMe is a storage protocol, PCIe is an electrical bus.
The drive you are looking at is the NVMe storage protocol on a PCIe bus in an m.2 connector. The manufacturer product ...
- 7,286
8
votes
Accepted
NVMe PCIe x4 SSD on M.2 PCIe x2 slot?
A single lane of PCIe 3.0 is capable of, in theory, 985MB/s. Two lanes would be twice that at 1970MB/s.
Overheads may eat into that slightly.
PCIe should also negotiate how many lanes are available, ...
- 93.8k
7
votes
How to connect a 12v 8 pin EPS to a 12v 8 Pin PCIe?
The EPS plug is an 8pin connector which has 12V cables and GND cables.
The PCIe plug is an 8pin connector which has 12V cables and GND cables. It also has two sense pins which as per the spec can be ...
- 1,556
7
votes
Accepted
Are PCIe devices designed to use in multi-platform and architectures?
Here's the issues with PCI option ROMs on ARM architecture:
An option ROM written in x86 assembly won't be understandable by an ARM CPU.
Option ROMs meant to be executed by PC BIOSes (such ROMs start ...
- 74.2k
7
votes
Accepted
What exactly does the spec “PCIe 3.0 x16 slot (x4)” mean?
16x is physical slot size, that is capable of wiring up to 16 PCIe lanes, but on your motherboard that slot has only 4 lanes connected to it.
For the former slot with 16x or 8x/8x that means that when ...
- 1,332
7
votes
Since my power supply doesn’t provide an 8 pin cable to connect it to my GPU, then what should I connect to my GPU?
Your main problem, even if your existing power supply can theoretically send enough power, is that 6-pin cables are limited to 75W, whereas 8-pin can send 150W. The PCI rail can also send 75W.
The 7th ...
- 50k
6
votes
Is PCI / PCI-e via USB possible?
Bandwidth is not of any significant consideration, as most forms of USB do have enough to support a PCI type interface, even if not at the full speed of the target interface.
As Jamie Hanrahan eluded ...
- 161
6
votes
Determine PCIe device NUMA node
The accepted answer only works for network cards, as far as I've found. Per GuillermoMA's answer, hwloc will give you the real deal even if it's not as legible. lstopo is found in the hwloc package (...
- 227
6
votes
Is it possible to connect an external GPU via Ethernet?
Not with ethernet, but with PCIe and Thunderbolt. This article breaks down the external GPU (eGPU) landscape well.
A number of companies sell PCIe/Thunderbolt enclosures. Some are limited by ...
- 2,216
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible