[link] - of course, _every_ PCIe graphics card _must_ be a 16 lane bandwidth monster. there is absolutely no way that it could work in a physical 16* slot with 8* electrical lanes, so all those budget mobos, or SLI mobos that do this are of course a waste of your money and will not be able to drive your grapchics card - if they do, or you have seen it, it's a bad dream. if some slack company decided to put 8 16* physical slots on a mobo and only wire a single lane to it, your graphics card would _never_ work. physical characteristics of slots/cards do not fracture the flexability of PCIe (though perhaps my spelling does). it's a bandwidth 'requirement' of graphics cards that ideally they should be used in a 16 lane slot.