Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G video card upgrade question

[mobboss]

Folks,

Well, its time for me to upgrade my video card in my 3 year old system. I currently have a Nvidea Geforce 8800 GTS 512 card and am looking to upgrade to either a Radeon HD 6870 or a Geforce 560 Ti card. My question is whether my mobo will be able compatible with this card and what type of performance hit/bottle neck I can expect (if any at all) via the interface and CPU I currently have.

My current system set up:

Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G LGA 775 mobo
Intel Core Duo E8400 CPU
2 gig ram (2x1 DDR2 800) memory
500 gig Western Digital HD
Geforce 8800 GTS 512 video card
Win XP
Generic DVD drive

Planning on making the following upgrades:

Win 7 Premium Home Edition
additional 4 gig ram (2x2 DDR2 800) for a total of 6 gig
Either a Radeon HD 6870 or Geforce 560 Ti video card.

My main concern is my mobo has a PCI Express x 16 slot and not a PCI E Express 2.0/2.1 x 16 slot. What kind of performance hit will I experience (if any) in putting a PCI E 2.0/2.1 card into a backwards compatible slot? Any concerns that it might not work at all?

Secondly, how badly (if at all) will I bottleneck myself with those modern video cards and my Intel Core Duo E8400 CPU? For what its worth, I typical game at lower resolution levels anyway, and prefer a decent combination of graphic detail vs playability...usually at 1280x1024 and sometimes at 1680x1050.

Basic reasons for upgrade is the entry of games like Battlefield 3 and others that flat out require Win 7 and a better video card to run decently.

Thanks in advance for your comments!!!

 

[mobboss]

Not a single reply? Dang.

Well, anyway, I have continued to dig into this and seem to be finding two separate answers. One answer being that although the PCIe-x16 interface will limit a new video card that uses PCIe-x16 2.0/2.1 that the limitation will be largely unoticeable to the nake eye.

Read a couple of other posts that disagreed with that and said it also largely depends on how well a game is coded that could make the difference in playability or not on such a system.

Still waiting for a bit of feedback on this. Again, would it be worth it to upgarde my current system (that frankly, isnt that old) with Win XP, and adding some ram and a new videocard: a Radeon HD 6870 or Geforce 560 Ti?

Thanks.

MB

Folks,

Well, its time for me to upgrade my video card in my 3 year old system. I currently have a Nvidea Geforce 8800 GTS 512 card and am looking to upgrade to either a Radeon HD 6870 or a Geforce 560 Ti card. My question is whether my mobo will be able compatible with this card and what type of performance hit/bottle neck I can expect (if any at all) via the interface and CPU I currently have.

My current system set up:

Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G LGA 775 mobo
Intel Core Duo E8400 CPU
2 gig ram (2x1 DDR2 800) memory
500 gig Western Digital HD
Geforce 8800 GTS 512 video card
Win XP
Generic DVD drive

Planning on making the following upgrades:

Win 7 Premium Home Edition
additional 4 gig ram (2x2 DDR2 800) for a total of 6 gig
Either a Radeon HD 6870 or Geforce 560 Ti video card.

My main concern is my mobo has a PCI Express x 16 slot and not a PCI E Express 2.0/2.1 x 16 slot. What kind of performance hit will I experience (if any) in putting a PCI E 2.0/2.1 card into a backwards compatible slot? Any concerns that it might not work at all?

Secondly, how badly (if at all) will I bottleneck myself with those modern video cards and my Intel Core Duo E8400 CPU? For what its worth, I typical game at lower resolution levels anyway, and prefer a decent combination of graphic detail vs playability...usually at 1280x1024 and sometimes at 1680x1050.

Basic reasons for upgrade is the entry of games like Battlefield 3 and others that flat out require Win 7 and a better video card to run decently.

Thanks in advance for your comments!!!