PCI E 1.1 vs PCI e 2.0

[tesseract08]

I am a little confused about the whole PCI-E 1.x and PCI-E 2.0.

What I am wondering is if older motherboards only support PCI-E 1.x and newer motherboards support both?

For example: If I were to get a newer PCI-E 2.0 video card on an older motherboard would it perform to its fullest potential?

 

[V3NOM]

PCI E 2.0 is backwards compatible to 1.1, and 1.1 is mainly forwards compatible with 2.0, which is great.

if you have a 4870X2 for example on a P35 (pci e 1.1 x16) i'm pretty certain it would be bottlenecked. but a card like the 8800GT, or even a low end card like the 4650 or 9600GSO which are rated at 2.0 specs would not be bottlenecked by a 1.1 slot, or if so, bottlenecked by an unnoticeable amount.

but seriously. if you're buying a 1.1 card to put in a 2.0 slot... you're a little behind the times lol

 

[Peaks]

For example: If I were to get a newer PCI-E 2.0 video card on an older motherboard would it perform to its fullest potential?

A 2.0 card will run on a 1.1 slot but at the at the slower data transfer rate of the 1.1 slot (half that of a 2.0 slot)....so it will be bottlenecked

 

[bestliu]

I do agree with V3's opinion. If you get a high-end card , it seems that you have enough budget for a comparable MB for your newer PC such as P43 or P45

 

[Stupido]

And what about CPU impact?

 

[tesseract08]

I'm actually having trouble finding that information about my motherboard. Is an Asus P5N-E SLI a PCI-E 1.1 or PCI-E 2.0? It doesn't specify in the manual.

 

[coozie7]

Can`t find out either but the PCI-E 2.0 spec was n`t issued until Jan 07, so I`d guess your board is either 1.0 or 1.1. Either way unless you go for a X2 style card the loss in graphic performance would be more theoretical than noticeable.