PCI-E 1.1 vs PCI-E 2.0?

[Abydosone]

I recently made a pc upgrade a few months ago, however I made the mistake of purchasing a P35 board (P5K-E) right before the P45 was released. I had no idea that P45 was coming out at the time, and I noticed that P45 includes a PCI-E 2.0 slot, as opposed to the 1.1 slot on the P35. I was wondering if it really will make a difference with the new PCI-E 2.0 cards hitting the market. I have read that there are no cards that come close to fully utilizing the bandwidth of PCI-E 1.x. Should I try to sell off this P35 and go for a P45 just for PCI-E 2.0? Or how long will PCI- 1.x last in the market...

 

[evongugg]

PCIe 2.0 is backwards compatible with 1.1.
No problem there.
Keep your P35 motherboard. It will work fine with the new video cards.

 

[Cranky1970]

Keep your P-35. I thought about upgrading to a P-45 but it will make little to no difference in your GPU performance to be honest.

 

[huron]

Agreed...the P45 is basically the same board with very little improvements. There have been some articles about that same point.

 

[dirtmountain]

^ agree

 

[Abydosone]

Thanks. My thoughts are that my next upgrade will be in a few years from now, so I am trying to tell myself I did not make a mistake purchasing DDR2 800 memory and a P35 board. I am still using my old 775 Pentium 4 530, and a GeForce 7900 GT. Hopefully before the end of this year I will have an E8400 and a better graphics card (4850? If they fix the fan problems)...

 

[mactronix]

No you didnt make a mistake you made a good price/performance decision. Even if not intentionally.
A P35 is fine the only issues come if you start using dual GPU's DDR3 RAM isnt going to make a differance either. When the i7 chip comes out then it will show improvements but thats a whole new socket/motherboard anyway.
I recently built and i went from an Athalon 3000+ to an E4600 on a P35 board with support for CPU's up to and including 1600 FSB chips. I still have wolfdale core 2 chips to go and then quads or the extreme chips. So the upgrade path is there for a good few years yet.

Mactronix

 

[emp]

Thanks. My thoughts are that my next upgrade will be in a few years from now, so I am trying to tell myself I did not make a mistake purchasing DDR2 800 memory and a P35 board. I am still using my old 775 Pentium 4 530, and a GeForce 7900 GT. Hopefully before the end of this year I will have an E8400 and a better graphics card (4850? If they fix the fan problems)...

And about the 4850 and 4870, they are designed to run hotter, because they are made on newer silicon that can sustain the temps, but if you're that concerned do as I did, and buy a card with an non-reference cooler installed. I got myself a Sapphire HD 4850 Dual Slot edition and my GPU never goes above 60 C, not even when playing Crysis or using Atitool.