PCI-E 3.0 X16 vs PCI-E 2.0 X16

SkinnyFing3rs · Aug 22, 2014

Hey guys. I am getting a R9 270X video card and I need to know if it will work in a PCI-E 2.0 X16 slot, specifically the one on this motherboard ASRock 980DE3/U3S3 AM3+ AMD RX881/760G
Or does it need a PCI-E 3.0 X16 slot?

Suztera · Aug 22, 2014

It will work fine on a PCIE 2.0 slot. Difference is negligible for a single R9 270X

clutchc · Aug 22, 2014

Yes, of course. PCIe is a backward compatible interface. Besides, no card today can saturate the bandwidth of even 2.0

Dark Lord of Tech · Aug 22, 2014

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/
Impact of PCI-E Speed on Gaming Performance

Here's a good read ^

clutchc · Aug 22, 2014

Yeah, that 9 month old article pretty much confirms what so many folks here hate to accept. That even PCIe x8 @ 2.0 isn't realistically any slower in real life gaming than PCIe x16 @ 3.0... today. I have kinda confirmed that myself with my old Z68 MB @ x8,x8 SLI and CF.

From what I've read, PCIe x16 3.0 was mainly developed for PCIe SSDs because they were becoming bottlenecked by the SATA interface.

redgarl · Aug 22, 2014

You will see a gain from 4x to 8x, but 8x to 16x is negligible.

clutchc · Aug 22, 2014

Yeah, x4 is a crippler. I tried that once with a x16, x4 board. The end result was poorer performance in some games that the single card alone. That was back when I thought 2 x HD 6850s in CFx were pretty hot... lol.

redgarl · Aug 23, 2014

clutchc :

Even there, all the double GPU cards are sharing the 16X bandwith to 8x per GPU. Going 16x16x doesn't change much since all cards are designed to be performing in 8x.

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PCI-E 3.0 X16 vs PCI-E 2.0 X16

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