8x PCIe versions of HIC/GHIC When does it affect performance?

I’m trying to spec a server to host S1070/S2050 units, and struggling a bit with PCIe configurations. For external reasons, I’m going with the HP DL380 G6 (which has 32 PCIe lanes). The data centre that I’m using requires a add-on NIC (can’t use the onboard ones). I’ll also be running Win2003 x64 on it, so will need a NVIDIA graphics card.

It looks like the easiest way of getting everything to work is to:

Run:

  • One 16x HIC
  • One 8x GHIC
  • One PCIe NIC

My question is, what’s the performance implication of running two devices off a 8x interface? I’m guessing that it will mostly affect device to host data transfer speeds (which we are not heavy on). Does anyone have experience with the 16x v.s. 8x interface cards?

TIA