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Which ASUS boards have the PLX chip for 16x16 GPU 's

Hollis1
Level 7
With so many boards from MSI,ASROCK,ASUS and Gigabyte utilizing the PLX bridge for 2 to 3 to 4 GPU's at 16x16 or 16 x(4) ...Which x99 or Z170 boards from ASUS have the PLX chips...?
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8 REPLIES 8

Chino
Level 15
Haswell-E CPUs have an abundant number of PCIe lanes so X99 motherboards don't need a PLX chip. As for Z170, the ASUS Z170-WS supports 4-Way SLI and CrossFireX configurations.

Korth
Level 14
The Asus X99-E WS uses some sort of PLX.

X99/Haswell-E natively supports up to x16/x16/x8 or x16/x8/x8/x8 (unless using a lane-locked processor like the i7-5820K, which has lower limits). It's theoretically possible to run x8/x8/x8/x8/x8 but to my knowledge no motherboards do this because no GPU maker supports 5-way multi-GPU and the number of physical PCIe slots would require a nonstandard EATX form factor (not to mention a ridiculous PSU). These maximal lane limits are essentially hardwired into the motherboard architecture and can only be exceeded with PLX components, so any mobo which advertises better will obviously use a PLX.
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

The i7-5960x and the 5930k ship with 40 PCI-E lanes enabled for up to 4 way SLI...
The MSI X99 Extreme 11 "I think" has 2 PLX chips for 4 way 16x16x16x16... I was kind of leaning towards that but is very pricey.

kkn
Level 14
waste of monney, you wont notice enny thing on the speed TBH, maby a few frames or so?
it all comes down what you going use it for.

Mostly gaming and 4K gaming......

Korth
Level 14
"PLX" is a bit of a misnomer, PLX Technologies is (was) a manufacturer of circuit components like PCIe switches and PCIe bridges and PCIe multiplexers. What "PLX" or "PLX chip" means to most people is a chip which splices a single physical PCIe slot (or lane, or group of lanes) into more logical PCIe slots or lanes.

Short version is that it doesn't matter how many physical slots are mounted on the motherboard or how many lanes can be allocated in the BIOS because the processor can simultaneously address a maximum of 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes worth of bandwidth under best conditions. There are zero performance gains once PCIe 3.0 devices saturate all these lanes (in fact, there are minor performance losses since the PLX processing part adds signal latency and complicates timings, the increased signal traffic adds packet envelope overheads, and the increased signal collisions/errors require more packets get resent). So you might be able to install four GPU cards in a PLX x16/x16/x16/x16 configuration but actual performance will be comparable to (actually worse than) a non-PLX x16/x8/x8/x8 configuration. (And, besides, even mighty 980Ti and TitanX GPU cards at full load can hardly saturate >8 PCIe 3.0 lanes in practice, especially if they're directly interlinked off the PCIe bus with a CF/SLI bridge.) Just gotta wait for future Intel processors with more integrated PCIe 3.0 lane controllers.
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

Korth
Level 14
Necro thread, lol ...

I found this interesting comparison of benchmark and fps scores across a variety of PLX and non-PLX multi-GPU systems.

PLX isn't needed when the processor/chipset has enough PCIe lanes. But it's still the only way to build 3-way and 4-way multi-GPU on many motherboards (especially when they're also populated with fast M.2 storage, wired and wireless networking adapters, audio cards, and other PCIe-based devices).

I'd be interested in seeing how "physical x8/x4/x4" 3-way SLI on a Z270 mobo (like any ROG Maximus IX) compares vs "logical x16/x16/x16" 3-way SLI on a PLX-capable Z270 mobo (like the PEX8747-equipped Supermicro C7Z270-PG), if anyone here has such hardware, lol. We know "PLX" introduces latencies, but what does this really mean and how does it really balance out in terms of raw fps on a triple-GPU or quad-GPU system?
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

8CarlosDuquE8
Level 7
EVGA Z170 Classified 4-way Micro code Inser + Intel Core i7-8086K 5.3 GHz Custom-Binned
DDR4-4133MHz CL17-17-17-37 32GB (4x8GB) 3xSUPPLY-POWER EVGA - PSU SUPERNOVA 850 T2 TITANIUM
3-way SLI on KFA2 GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB HOF 8 Pack Edition
Chipset Intel Z170
Chipset - Extra PLX PEX8747
PLX TOTAL 40lanes IS x8x8x8x8x8 or x8x16x16 or x8x8x8x8x4x2x2 or x8x8x8x4x4x8 PLX
😞 i Need One Asus Rog 4k 144Hz HDR or 8k Sharp: 27-inch monitor 8K HDR and 120 Hz.
easy i have one ASUS ROG Xpander Jp Rullz :cool:
PCI-E Slot Breakdown
PCI-E Lane Distribution

PE1 – x16 (x8 if PE2 is used), 16/8 lanes from CPU

PE2 – x16 (x8 if PE3 is used), 16/8 lanes from PLX

PE3 – x8, 8 lanes from PLX

PE4 – x16 (x8 if PE6 is used), 16/8 lanes from PLX

PE5 – x4, 4 lanes from PCH

PE6 – x8, 8 lanes from PLX

FOR 2 WAY SLI:
Slots 1 and 4 tested to be fastest for 2 way SLI
due to
more CPU derived PCIE lanes, Slots 2 and 4 will give
higher theoretical
bandwidth 16x on both, additional lanes are from PL
X. The test was with 3
configs slots 1/4, 1/2, and 2/4, slots 1/4 always p
erformed best for 2x SLI.
SLI Slot breakdown
SLI Mode
Native from CPU
Extended from PLX, 8x shared from
CPU
PE1 CPU+PLX
PE2 CPU+PLX
PE3 PLX
PE4 CPU+PLX
PE5 – x4, 4 lanes from PCH or Use PCH for SSD U.2 intel
PE6 Thunderbolt or Physx card x4 or x8 PLX