Quad PEG16X slots in use
The four PCI Express Graphics 16X slots aren't there for shits and giggles. While primarily there for graphics boards and the provision of 8 displays from one PC system (as set out by ASUS on the box of the thing no less), the PCI Express slots -- as mentioned before -- are also able to take any PCI Express board without any issue. ASUS have a list of validated add-in boards, with Intel's SRCU42E Ultra 320 on PCI Express 16X, ATI's FireGL V7350 workstation graphics accelerator and myriad other desktop-class graphics boards among those in the manual and validated for running in any of the P5W64 WS Pro's four slots.Without any non-graphics hardware on PCI Express to hand, we did what we were able and stuffed the P5W64 WS Pro full of VGA boards instead. A motley crew of all NVIDIA hardware ended gracing the slots, from low-end GeForce 6-series to the GeForce 7800 GTX that so shook the world back on release. Settling on two GeForce 7800 GTXs, a GeForce 6600 GT and a lowly GeForce 6200 TurboCache, we dropped all four in and let the recent 91.47 display driver do its thing. Here's the proof it all works.
While you only get to see 8 little monitor avatars in Windows Display Properties when you actually connect 8 physical displays, you can see one head per installed board here, and the others would spring to life when connected. If a hydra-like eight heads is what you're after.....
We show an Audigy 2 ZS and ASUS PhysX board installed just for the full board stuffing and cool picture opportunity. It's rare you see a mainboard setup like that, and it was good fun making it all work.
So the claimed capability of four in-use slots is held up, the P5W64 WS Pro showing off its prodigious connectivity in 8-8-4-8 mode.
