MP 7,1 What to use for only 16 lane PCIE slot left in Mac Pro 2019? The Afterburner card or Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card?

[gory]

Hello! I have recently purchased a Mac Pro 2019 with 3.2 GHz 16-Core Intel Xeon W and 2 x AWD Radeon Pro Vega II - with the afterburner card and 192MB Ram. I am using this computer for video editing.

I only have one 16 PCIE lane slot left to use for either A) Afterburner card or B) Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card.

The only other slots that are available 7 and 8.

Which card would you recommend I use in the 16 lane 5th slot, with 4k and 8k video editing in mind on Davinci? Yes, I will be working with pro-res.

I am wondering if the use of the afterburner will be drastically compromised if I put it in the 6th or 7th slot, which are limited to 8 lanes? Or would the difference be negligible, given the processor and memory? I feel like I might get more benefit out of using faster NVMEs to edit my footage off on the Sonnet card, than the afterburner card, but I could be wrong. Look forward to your opinions?

Is it OK to use the afterburner in the 6th or 7th slot?

And is there anyone who is using the afterburner in the 6th or 7th slot, and not noticing much of a difference vs having it a 16 lane slot? I have searched, but haven't seen anyone who has tested the performance in the x16 lane slot vs the x8 slot?

Would appreciate your recommendations. Thanks!

 

[mattspace]

Hello! I have recently purchased a Mac Pro 2019 with 3.2 GHz 16-Core Intel Xeon W and 2 x AWD Radeon Pro Vega II - with the afterburner card and 192MB Ram. I am using this computer for video editing.

I only have one 16 PCIE lane slot left to use for either A) Afterburner card or B) Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card.

The only other slots that are available 7 and 8.

Which card would you recommend I use in the 16 lane 5th slot, with 4k and 8k video editing in mind on Davinci? Yes, I will be working with pro-res.

I am wondering if the use of the afterburner will be drastically compromised if I put it in the 6th or 7th slot, which are limited to 8 lanes? Or would the difference be negligible, given the processor and memory? I feel like I might get more benefit out of using faster NVMEs to edit my footage off on the Sonnet card, than the afterburner card, but I could be wrong. Look forward to your opinions?

Is it OK to use the afterburner in the 6th or 7th slot?

And is there anyone who is using the afterburner in the 6th or 7th slot, and not noticing much of a difference vs having it a 16 lane slot? I have searched, but haven't seen anyone who has tested the performance in the x16 lane slot vs the x8 slot?

Would appreciate your recommendations. Thanks!

I recall reading a while back (don't know where) that putting the Afterburner in an x8 slot just halved the number of realtime decoding streams you can do. And that's pretty much it, because that's effectively all the card does.

So if you're working with fewer simultaneous video streams than that, you'd notice no difference.

 

[joevt]

I don't know the answer to your question. I do know there are ways to add more PCIe slots.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/external-psu-for-7-1-available.2397616/post-32359849