ATI x16 vs x8 Performance
 

A couple of weeks back we looked at the performance of the nForce x16 chipset by plugging a couple of 7800GTX cards in SLI mode and finding out how much extra performance we could gain by having two dedicated PCI-E x16 lanes instead of one that’s split into two X8 lanes. The results were disappointing with only one game, Quake4, showing any performance gains.

Now with ATI’s Xpress 3200 Northbridge officially launched, we figured its only fair to put ATI to the same test and thus today, we will show the performance difference between two X1900XT cards under the older ATI RD480 chipset which has two PCI-E x8 lanes and the newer ATI Xpress3200 with two dedicated PCI-E x16 lanes.