Is PCI Express x4 faster or slower than a standard PCI slot for graphic cards?

Posted by Stephen R on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Stephen R
Published on 2012-04-11T17:27:51Z Indexed on 2012/04/11 17:32 UTC
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graphics-card

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motherboard

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hardware-rec

I am looking at potential motherboards for a computer I want to build and ran into this conundrum. The motherboard has two PCI Express slots that allow for 16 channel cards to fit in them. The catch is only one of them operates at 16 channels, the other operates only 4 channels.

My question is, would it be faster to buy a PCI Express graphic card and install it in the 4 channel PCI Express slot? Or would it be better to buy a standard PCI graphic card and install it in one of the available PCI slots?

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