The number after the ‘x’ often denotes the amount of PCIe Lanes the slot offers. There are various sizes of PCIe slots, i.e., x1, x4, x8, and x16. The PCIe interface comprises PCIe lanes that act as communication highways connecting the various PCIe devices, such as graphics cards, WiFi cards, NVMe SSDs, etc., to the CPU.Ī graphics card is effectively a PCIe device, and PCIe slots are where you connect PCIe devices too. One such essential component is the PCIe interface.Īlso Read: How to Know if Graphics Card is Compatible With Your Motherboard? A Refresher on PCIe Interface A motherboard assembles several critical sub-components jammed up into one place.
There is often a misconception that the motherboard doesn’t affect a graphics card’s performance. If You Plug a Newer Gen GPU in an Older Gen PCIe Slot
If You Plug Your GPU in a PCIe Slot With Fewer than 16 Lanes
So How Can Motherboard Bottleneck a GPU?.
