Nvidia Restores PCI Express 3.0 Support Socket2011 Boards

Nvidia has released a patch that allows 6xx-series graphics cards with a Kepler GPU to use the third-generation PCI Express interface on more platforms. Previously, only 1155 boards supported that interface.

Various manufacturers’ motherboards equipped with Intel’s latest chipset, the Series 7 Express chipset, support PCI Express 3.0 interfaces. Many Series 6 boards, originally intended for Sandy Bridge processors, but also equipped with an lga1155 socket, also support the higher bandwidth offered by PCI Express 3.0. The latest video cards from both AMD and Nvidia can handle the extra bandwidth. However, Nvidia withdrew support on the high-end platform based on Sandy Bridge E processors due to lack of formal certification for the pci express 3.0 interface.

With its latest patch, Nvidia has re-enabled the pci express 3.0 support of the X79 platform, also known as the Sandy Bridge E HEDT platform. The patch is suitable for the latest video cards from the Kepler series, such as the GTX 670 and GTX 680. They are forced to run in PCI Express 3.0 mode after a reboot, so that the total available bandwidth of a lane is used at 8GT/s can become. Incidentally, almost exclusively sli setups where cards are inserted into an x8 slot would benefit from the extra bandwidth. An x16 slot with PCI Express 2.0 interface provides ample bandwidth for the Kepler cards.