It's always been clear that PCIe bandwidth has an effect on gaming, especially when playing on some of the most high-end GPUs. But what about content creation? Puget Systems put this idea to the test and found that lacking proper PCIe bandwidth can seriously hinder performance in video rendering and game development. That suggests professionals working with multiple add-in cards may need to take care in their placement to ensure the best possible performance for their workloads.
PCIe generation is almost exclusively down to your motherboard's specifications. But just because a board supports the latest PCIe 5 on its 16x slots doesn't mean they're all equal. Plugging cards into both slots can cause them to default to a mere 8x lane configuration, halving bandwidth for both cards. Installing additional NVMe SSDs can also reduce the number of available lanes, potentially impacting performance in a range of professional tasks. The same goes for older motherboards with support for older standards, too.
