Re: T520 34mm Express Card Slot.

Message

delman · #1 Post by **delman** » Sun Sep 02, 2012 6:43 pm

Hi all. I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T520 i7-2820 with a 34mm express card slot. Am trying to hook up an external graphics card setup but my contact tells me I really need a "3x" slot for the setup to work properly. Can anyone tell me HOW I know what speed the slot is? I've checked the specs online and can't seem to find that info?

mikemex · #2 Post by **mikemex** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 2:51 am

It's the PCI Express version supported by the chipset. Only Ivy Bridge supports PCI Express 3.0, a T520 would have PCI Express 2.0.

But it doesn't really make much difference. Standard cards are 16 lanes and ExpressCard slot always has 1 lane. It's going to bottleneck anyway, just less so with a faster version.

delman · #3 Post by **delman** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 7:04 pm

Thx for your help mikemex.

syncrotic · #4 Post by **syncrotic** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 10:12 pm

Actually, it might be PCIe 1.0 or 2.0, depending on whether the lane being routed to the expresscard slot comes off the CPU or the south bridge chip. By now I assume you've tried the eGPU setup: what speed does it run at? You can use GPU-Z to check...