Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This is not NVIDIA's top-of-the-line card, but its GPU can be easily overclocked
to match the speed of the company's best-in-class card, for several hundred
dollars less.
Installing the Graphics Card
The GTX 780 Ti is a big card, taking up two expansion-card bays on the
motherboard. It also plugs into the long PCIe slot, of which there are three
on the Maximus VI. The two PCIe slots closest to the CPU communicate with
the card at the fastest speeds possible, while the PCIe slot farthest from the
CPU runs at half the speed of the other two long PCIe slots. Keep this in mind
if you ever want to buy a second GTX 780 Ti and want to daisy-chain them
together to make what NVIDIA calls a Scalable Link Interface (SLI) connection.
Since we're going to start with a single graphics card, we will install it in the
PCIe slot closest to the CPU on the motherboard. This not only makes it eas-
ier for us to install a second GTX 780 Ti later on, but it also keeps the cooling
fan on the side of the card unobstructed.
Before inserting the card into the long PCIe slot, remove the two expansion-
slot covers on the PC case that match where the graphics card will be
mounted. This should be the second and third slot covers, as shown in the
following figure and in
Figure 62,
Remove the second and third slot covers to
Figure 61—These are the PC-case slot covers.
