gaming on 4x PCI-E bus?

[doomsdaydave11]

Hello, I found an old mobo that has a 4x PCI-E bus and 800FSB. Obviously this board wasn't built for hardcore gaming, but I was wondering if when combined with a with an E4700 (currently the fastest 800FSB chip?) 2GB RAM and an 8800GT, if it could become a decent gaming rig. Will the 4x bus cripple the 8800GT? For the purpose of this thread, I do not want to upgrade the board.

 

[Guest]

it would work... but you would experience major bandwidth issues... I can't find the article now (sorry) but there was an article on toms that tested different pci lane bandwidths and anything below 8 lanes really started to suffer

 

[B-Unit]

Short answer: Probably

Long answer: 'Crippled' is probably a bit strong, but you definitely wont be getting top flight performance out of it. A 9800GX2 starts to bottleneck at 8xPCI-e 1.1, and when you consider an 8800GT to be roughly half of that, you should still see reasonable performance out of it, just not its maximum.

Are you buying the 8800GT specifically for this or is it something you already have?

 

[carver_g]

Hello, I found an old mobo that has a 4x PCI-E bus and 800FSB. Obviously this board wasn't built for hardcore gaming, but I was wondering if when combined with a with an E4700 (currently the fastest 800FSB chip?) 2GB RAM and an 8800GT, if it could become a decent gaming rig. Will the 4x bus cripple the 8800GT? For the purpose of this thread, I do not want to upgrade the board.

I agree with others that you will have some bandwidth issues, unless you game at lower resolutions.

I'm more concerned about the CPU you've selected. What chipset does the board have? Are you sure it supports C2D?

 

[blackwidow_rsa]

Probably a 945g mobo. Gaming would be a bit choppy, friend has a x800gt in one. You will feel the difference