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How much does a pre-2.0 PCI-E board bottleneck a 2.0 card?

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  • Motherboards
  • Bottleneck
  • PCI Express
Last response: in Motherboards
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August 27, 2008 1:27:44 AM

I am still fairly new to PC hardware and when I upgraded my gpu to an ATI 3870 I wasn't aware of the difference between PCI-E 2.0 and prior versions, what the differences are, etc. Well my motherboard is Intel's Badaxe 2, like my username :pt1cable:  and am all but certain it's 1.0 or 1.1. The 3870 still works in it, and I'm getting good results, but back to the question of how much of a bottleneck if any is using a 2.0 card on a board like this? I searched for results on this topic but nothing specific was showing up.

Much thanks to anyone who can help shed some light on this topic.

Thanks.

More about : pre pci board bottleneck card

August 27, 2008 1:39:28 AM

No bottleneck, not even if you were running a 4870.
August 27, 2008 2:00:12 AM

galta said:
No bottleneck, not even if you were running a 4870.


Well that's good news. So in other words the memory speeds on newer cards are still well within the bandwidth capacities of PCI-E 1.0, and this is the only real difference between 1.0 and 2.0?

Works for me, thanks.
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August 27, 2008 2:30:05 AM

Yes,

ZERO bottleneck even up to the GTX 280 or the 4870x2.
August 27, 2008 2:31:44 AM

Q: How much does a pre-2.0 PCI-E board bottleneck a 2.0 card?
A: ZERO.

Also HD's still do make use all the bandwith of a ATA connection.
While your thinking about it look at the Mbps HD's read/write vs the USB 1.0 standard...and they want to come out with a 3.0?!

You may expect todays top end/brand new MB's to die of old age l-o-n-g befor hardware uses all their bandwith.
August 27, 2008 4:53:43 AM

dagger that tweaktown article doesnt prove anything as both the x48 and p45 chipsets have PCI-e2.0
a b V Motherboard
August 27, 2008 5:10:34 AM

I'm not sure but doesn't pci-2.0 double the speed of each lane? so theoretically 1.0 pci-e x16 is really like pci-e x32 in pci-e 2.0? This would eplain why alot of the mid lvl boards simply split the single 2.0 pci-e x16 slot into two x8 slots. I would like to see if there is a bottleneck between 1.0 pci-e x8 and 2.0 pci-e x8 in dual cards. but I would seriously doubt there would be any.
August 27, 2008 1:00:14 PM

PsyKhiqZero said:
I'm not sure but doesn't pci-2.0 double the speed of each lane? so theoretically 1.0 pci-e x16 is really like pci-e x32 in pci-e 2.0? This would eplain why alot of the mid lvl boards simply split the single 2.0 pci-e x16 slot into two x8 slots. I would like to see if there is a bottleneck between 1.0 pci-e x8 and 2.0 pci-e x8 in dual cards. but I would seriously doubt there would be any.


Yes, it doubles bandwidth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_2....
A single pcie2.0x8=pcie1.0/1.1x16. Which is why I linked that article. pcie1.0x8=pcie2.0x4.
a b V Motherboard
August 27, 2008 1:25:37 PM

I have not seen any benchmark comparisons between
X48 with one 4870X2
and
P45 with one 4870X2

Theoretically, the P45 should be the better performer in this case, given a single PCI-E 2.0 config at 16X.
a b V Motherboard
August 27, 2008 1:47:46 PM

I give to you Tom's PCIe 2.0 Scaling Review.
As PCIe 2.0 doubles the bandwith of PCIe 1.1, compare PCIe 2.0 @ 16x to PCIe 2.0 @ 8x.
You will probably want to check the 9800GX2 benchies as it requires about the same or a little more bandwith than a GTX 280 or more than a 4870.
Bottom line is that you will see minimal to no bottlenecking with any current GPU in a 16x PCIe 1.1 slot.
August 27, 2008 4:18:39 PM

Proximon said:
I have not seen any benchmark comparisons between
X48 with one 4870X2
and
P45 with one 4870X2

Theoretically, the P45 should be the better performer in this case, given a single PCI-E 2.0 config at 16X.


There should be no difference whatsoever. Keep in mind, P45 runs at full pcie2.0x16 on single card. The bandwidth only havles when you add a second one.
!