I recently got an Asus TUF Gaming B650-E WiFi motherboard and I've been delving into PCIe lane bifurcation. I heard it could drop the GPU's PCIe slot from x16 to x8 when installing additional devices. I installed a 9070 XT GPU and added a second 1TB M.2 drive for dual booting Linux (Bazzite). Now I'm worried my GPU might underperform because I have both drives connected. I checked GPU-Z in Windows and it shows x16 4, but I find various conflicting info online. My setup is: main drive in m.2_1 and the Linux drive in m.2_2, which is right under the GPU slot. Both drives are Gen 4, and m.2_1 is Gen 5. Can someone confirm if GPU-Z is usually accurate, or do I need to consider removing the second drive? Any insights would really help!
1 Answer
You'll be just fine! This motherboard can handle two M.2 drives and an x16 GPU without any issues. Bifurcation mainly occurs when you start filling up 4 or 5 slots on more premium boards, but with your setup, you're good to go. Even if it did drop to x8, that wouldn’t bottleneck your 9070 XT; it's not likely to saturate those lanes anyway!
Oh cool, I figured x16 was way better than x8, but sounds like I'm good. Thanks for clarifying!