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PCI-E 3.0 X16 vs PCI-E 2.0 X16

Tags:
  • Graphics
  • Graphics Cards
  • AMD
  • Motherboards
  • PCI Express
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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August 22, 2014 5:26:44 PM

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?

More about : pci x16 pci x16

a c 118 U Graphics card
a b À AMD
a c 82 V Motherboard
August 22, 2014 5:28:19 PM

It will work fine on a PCIE 2.0 slot. Difference is negligible for a single R9 270X
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a c 342 U Graphics card
a c 195 À AMD
a c 519 V Motherboard
August 22, 2014 5:29:07 PM

Yes, of course. PCIe is a backward compatible interface. Besides, no card today can saturate the bandwidth of even 2.0
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Related resources
a c 342 U Graphics card
a c 195 À AMD
a c 519 V Motherboard
August 22, 2014 5:51:30 PM

SR-71 Blackbird said:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI...
Impact of PCI-E Speed on Gaming Performance


Here's a good read ^


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.
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August 22, 2014 5:52:36 PM

You will see a gain from 4x to 8x, but 8x to 16x is negligible.
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a c 342 U Graphics card
a c 195 À AMD
a c 519 V Motherboard
August 22, 2014 6:00:06 PM

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.
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August 23, 2014 3:14:43 AM

clutchc said:
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.
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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