Help Please! did i make a bad purchase???

[mjpd1983]

I recently bought the following

i5 750
HD5870
GIGABYTE P55A-UD3R
4GB DDR3

Now i've just read that since i run a sound card in one of the PCIE slots also to power the 5.1 speeakers that it will cut my lanes down to 8x and this will be choking my 5870??

I was aware it would cut the lanes down to 8x but did not know that (apparently) it will bottleneck the card a lot

Is this true? should i go back and swap for the X58 series???

Please advise cos im gutted if this is true

Thanks guys

[jcmaz]

You'll only loose <5%. You could always get another sound card...

[ilya]

It won't be significant, you might be able to find a small difference if you benchmark it for hours though.

[mjpd1983]

Thanks for replying so fast guys

So is there any way around the sound card issue?

Sorry what did u mean by i can always get another sound card? can i fix this problem by purchasing a diff sound card in a way that wont cut the lanes down to 8x? im not very informed on the latest ones and their PCIE specs

Thanks guys

[chrisk]

I doubt you will notice any difference.

Also, your board comes with onboard sound so you don't need a sound card at all if you are worried about it.

[grimx133]

What slot are you running the soundcard in? You have a pci-e x1 above the first pci-e x16, this is normally used for sound cards. If you have the soundcard in the second video card slot, it will reduce slot 1 to 8 lanes, if it's in the x1 it shouldn't. Have you checked to see what you are running at? Use gpu-z.

[mjpd1983]

Thanks again guys

I'm so embarrassed i just remembered just like chriskwarren said that i do have onboard sound on the Mobo

Feel like such a noob

Thanks for the help guys

Ps - how do i close threads i have made?

[chrisk]

No worries we are just happy you got it sorted! :)

[Zero82z]

Your motherboard has a PCI-E 1x slot above the top 16x slot. I would suggest that you put the sound card in that slot instead. Just about any sound card will give you much better sound quality than the onboard can produce, so you can have the best of both worlds that way.

[gingerbee]

how is it that no one caught that it has a 1x over for sound cards glad it's all gonna work for ya
edit from what i can see almost all full atx boards from gigabyte have the 1x for sound cards.