PCIe 2.0 or 3.0?

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greasy dave

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Nov 30, 2009
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I think I missed the boat on this one. I built my pc a few years back. I have a i7 930 and this mother board:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3449#sp
I had naively thought I'd be able to upgrade the graphics card when the time came - or worst case, by another HD 5850 (the card I have now) and crossfire it.

WEll, I've finally started considering upgrading and I've been looking at The AMD 7870 and the GTX 760 and I see that they're both PCie x16 3.0

I've no idea what this means. But on the motherboard specs it clearly states that the PCI e slots are 2.0 compatible.

Does this mean I'm screwed? I live in teh czech republic and I can't get hold of hold ATI cards here. The HD 5850 is no longer for sale. (plus I'd rather get a lower power single card)

I've been browsng the internet component sites and I can't find a single card listed as PCIe 16 2.0 - let alone a decent one that'll let me game.
:(

Can anyone give me advice? Can a PCIe x16 3.0 card go into my motherboard?

If not, are there any PCIe x16 2.0 cards out there that are 2GB cards? and deliver some kind of punch above my HD 5850?

Thanks in advance
 
Solution
ubercake
I had that same motherboard with an i7-930 and an i7-960.

Any new card will work fine in that motherboard. PCIe 3.0 cards work fine in PCIe 2.0 slots. I have two 780s in two of my PCIe 2.0 x16 slots (each with 16 lanes available) on my X79 motherboard.

You have two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots with 16 lanes available in each and a 3rd with 8 lanes available. PCIe 3.0 has twice the bandwidth of PCIe 2.0. So 1 PCIe 2.0 x16 slot with 16 lanes available has the same available bandwidth as a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot with 8 lanes available. Any modern cards will run just fine on your system.

If you run an SLI setup on a standard SLI-ready Z87 board using both PCIe 3.0 x16 slots they will run with 8 available lanes each which is the equivalent...
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ubercake

ubercake

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Oct 28, 2009
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I had that same motherboard with an i7-930 and an i7-960.

Any new card will work fine in that motherboard. PCIe 3.0 cards work fine in PCIe 2.0 slots. I have two 780s in two of my PCIe 2.0 x16 slots (each with 16 lanes available) on my X79 motherboard.

You have two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots with 16 lanes available in each and a 3rd with 8 lanes available. PCIe 3.0 has twice the bandwidth of PCIe 2.0. So 1 PCIe 2.0 x16 slot with 16 lanes available has the same available bandwidth as a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot with 8 lanes available. Any modern cards will run just fine on your system.

If you run an SLI setup on a standard SLI-ready Z87 board using both PCIe 3.0 x16 slots they will run with 8 available lanes each which is the equivalent bandwidth capacity of 16 lanes in a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot.

Just some examples of how newer cards will work just fine on your motherboard.

Also, trust me... You don't want to run a crossfire setup with 5850s. The problems crossfire presented with my 5850s (I ran with two and then three) was what turned me on to Nvidia and SLI.

Make sure you upgrade your BIOS to the latest release before trying to use the newer GPUs just to minimize the chance of any hardware compatibility issue.
 
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Solution
coozie7

coozie7

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You are not screwed and it's a decent rig you have there BTW.
The only difference between PCI-E 2.0 and 3.0 is internal, they use the same connector and any card that will fit the slot (and your case) will run perfectly well.
There will, technically be a performance loss, but it is only about 3%, not enough to notice.
This should help you decide on which card best suits your needs/budget: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-graphics-card-review,review-32865.html
Take a look at the end chart.
 
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greasy dave

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Thanks alot for all your replies. That's a huge relief. I built the rig with the hope that there'd be some future proofing in the basics, and if upgrading a card is not a problem, then it was definitely worth the expense back then.

Thanks for the advice regards updating bios. I have to admit - I'm a little bit nervous of doing that. I remember back when i built it everyone told me (I think even gigabyte advise it)- don't touch the bios, if it's not broke don't fix. I can't remember what the feature was, but people told me that the gigabyte updater software was not reliable.

Now I'm trying to decide whether to go for a 760 or a 270x. Prices are a little higher over here than they are in the US. Neither are cheap. But the 760 is still just about within my range.
 
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matt798

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yeah these motherboard software suites they release are pretty well junk. in my experience msi may very well have the worst uefi going for it.
all i used the msi control center for was to compare temp and voltage readings with popular monitoring software before i uninstalled it and started my oc
 
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