ATI R9 380 in a PCI-E 2.0 8x lane slot

Evilbred

Honorable
Jul 4, 2013
13
1
10,510
Good Day,

I'm looking to upgrade my computer for some of the new games coming out. What I have currently is:

Chipset: Intel 77
CPU: i7 3770K
Ram: 16 GB DDR3 1600Mhz
Powersupply: 300W
Vid slot: PCI-E 2.0 with x8 lanes
Video Card: NVIDIA GTX650
Harddrive: 5700rpm 2TB

My intent is to make the following upgrades:
Video Card: ATI R9 380 4GB
Hard Drive: 240GB SSD (Kingston V300) 500MB/s R/W
Powersupply: EVGA 600W

My questions is will the video card upgrade be a waste given I only have a PCI-E 2.0 with 8 lanes?

Given that I've budgeted about $500 on this upgrade having to replace the motherboard and the cpu will make the whole endeavor not worth the cost. Also if I go ahead and upgrade and don't get a significant performance upgrade for the cost then it's a waste for me.

Buying a new computer raises the wife's hackles more than buying a few unseen parts, and I do have a significant amount of leave coming up at the same time Fallout 4 comes out, which is where I plan to waste as much time as I am allowed.

Any help or advice on this would be appreciated.


 
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CraigN

Distinguished
What is your current motherboard model (It's not listed)? I find it hard to believe it's PCIE 2.0 8x only if it's a 3770K.

Just buy a newer Z77 board with PCIE 3.0 (or 2.0 x16) and you should be good to go, i7-3770Ks will drop right in. The 3770K is still more than fast enough of a CPU.

The PCIE 2.0 at 8x will bottleneck the card. I would say if you can hold off on the SSD to buy the Motherboard, do that, but only if your motherboard really only supports PCIE 2.0 8x. It would help knowing the model of your board though.
 

Billy_4

Reputable
Oct 10, 2015
76
0
4,660
A x8 lane won't effect performance that much but it would still be very noticeable and a shame to put such a high end GPU to waste. Find a socket 1155 motherboard with a x16 lane and call it a day, you can pick up a cheap one for next to nothing and it will be worth it, but its worth getting a decent board if you want to continue overclocking. Also pcie 3.0 will not improve your performance anywhere near enough to be worried about it, a 2.0 is fine.
 

Evilbred

Honorable
Jul 4, 2013
13
1
10,510
A x8 lane won't effect performance that much but it would still be very noticeable and a shame to put such a high end GPU to waste. Find a socket 1155 motherboard with a x16 lane and call it a day, you can pick up a cheap one for next to nothing and it will be worth it, but its worth getting a decent board if you want to continue overclocking. Also pcie 3.0 will not improve your performance anywhere near enough to be worried about it, a 2.0 is fine.

I went back through to check things and do more digging after this post. (Unfortunately I'm traveling and not anywhere near my desktop) searching based on my invoices online with the models, it turns out the motherboard is a P8H77 variant which seems to have PCI-E 3 16x for all variants.

I did spend about 2 hours searching to try and find all the details but obviously went down the wrong path.
Sorry to waste everyone's time on this.

I guess if anyone still wants to follow up, will this be an effective upgrade or could I be making better choices?
 

CraigN

Distinguished


No worries - not a waste of time, you asked a legitimate question! Glad you were able to find out your board is better featured than you thought!
The PSU is a good choice, the EVGA ones are good and 600W is plenty for that card.
Kingston makes a solid SSD. Short of considering options from Crucial, Samsung, or Sandisk, I have no other recommendations there. Most of them are pretty reliable at this point.
 
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