Sapphire ATI RADEON HD 3870 512MB and pci e 2.0

[samoo]

Do you really need a pci e 2.0 mother board to get the full benefit of this card or is pci e just fine if so then why. This is going to be for a new computer system. Thanks

 

[nightscope]

No, video cards these days are not even using up the full 16 lanes provided in the Pci-Express 1.0 slots. So you won't notice a difference between using pci e 1.0 and 2.0, at least not a very noticeable one.

 

[kona]

No, you wont notice any difference at all as the above me said the bandwidth of PCI-E 1.0 isn't anywhere near maxed out yet.

 

[DM0407]

You may actually see a small decrease in performance. There is slightly more overhead on the 2.0 transfer design. Don't want anyone to get upset, but Anandtech recently did a nice article on PCI-e.

 

[Turas]

I think the only real benefit would be not having to use the power connector as I believe the 2.0 slot provide enough power to the card. I believe that is what I read somewhere but don't quote me on it as I have nto tried myself.

 

[DM0407]

Still need the power connector, PCI-E 2.0 consumes more power too because it runs at twice the frequency of PCI-E 1.x.

It its much more scalable than 1.x but we wont see any real benefits unless your MB has 4 PCI-E slots which would be able to run at 8X speed (more than enough). PCI-E 2.0 is basically PCI-E 32X on a 16X design.

 

[samoo]

that is what I thought how powerful do the video cards need to be before they will need pci e 2.0?thanks