P5LD2 Deluxe: PCIe x4 in Universal PCI-E Slot?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nick
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Nick

Hello,

Is the Universal PCI-E Slot for graphics card only? Instead of plugging
in a 2nd graphics card into the Universal PCI-E Slot on the P5LD2 Deluxe
mainboard, is it possible to plug in a PCIe x4 SATA RAID card into this
slot?

Nick
 
Nick said:
Hello,

Is the Universal PCI-E Slot for graphics card only? Instead of plugging
in a 2nd graphics card into the Universal PCI-E Slot on the P5LD2 Deluxe
mainboard, is it possible to plug in a PCIe x4 SATA RAID card into this
slot?

Nick
Click to expand...

As near as I can tell from looking at chipset datasheets, the
Northbridge has 16 PCI-E lanes, and terminates one video card.
The ICH7 Southbridge connects to the Northbridge via DMI (1GB/sec
up and 1GB/sec down), and has 6 PCI-E lanes. There is a x1
slot, a x4 slot, and the Marvell Ethernet chip gets the remaining
x1 lane. My guess is, the x4 slot is more of a general purpose
PCI Express slot than anything else. (There is at least one
register in the ICH7 that mentions x4 operation.) Of course,
someone will have to test it and prove that to be the case :-)

Section 2.5.4 of the user manual says "install any other PCI
Express device in the Universal PCI Express slot (black connector)".
That sounds a bit more positive about it.

Paul
 
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