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OC 7970 in a PCIe2.0 motherboard? Performance issues?

Tags:
  • Intel
  • Motherboards
  • Bandwidth
  • Sapphire
  • Graphics
  • Performance
  • GPUs
  • Bottleneck
  • Graphics Cards
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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November 28, 2013 10:53:40 AM

Can I use the full potential of the 7970 in an Intel DZ68ZV Extreme motherboard (pcie2)?
I am concerned about bandwidth saturation or other bottlenecks.

In particular, it is the Sapphire HD 7970 GHz Edition 6GB card that I am thinking about. I have read the reference 7970 is quite close to the PCIE2 limits and there isn't a real difference on a pcie3 mobo, but what about this Sapphire?!

CPU is a i7 2600. I will be running twin 120hz 23" samsungs, thinking about a third. Used mainly for video processing. Any help much appreciated.

More about : 7970 pcie2 motherboard performance issues

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a b V Motherboard
a b U Graphics card
November 28, 2013 10:59:07 AM

PCI-E 3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0, no GPU's can even saturate a 2.0 x16 slot (the 7970 6gb included) so you aren't looking at losing much of anything in terms of performance.

At the moment the AM3+ socket mobo's do not support PCI-E 3.0 which the 7970's development bench rig was. Basically, it was designed using 2.0.

TL;DR: You will be fine.
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a b U Graphics card
November 28, 2013 10:59:32 AM

Currently there are no cards that can really max out PCIE 2.0. Don't expect any fps difference from PCIE 3.0 to 2.0
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