How much performance am I losing by not using PCIe 2.0?

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gamer30

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Hey everyone,

I'm looking forward to being a member of these forums. The people on Tom's seem to be some of the best informed and most experienced computer people anywhere. That's why I came here with this question:

I have a XFX Radeon 4770 which is PCIe 2.0 capable. My motherboard, Abit IP35 PRO, however, only runs at PCIe 1.1a/1.0. How much performance am I losing by not using a PCIe 2.0 slot? I found a mobo that is LGA775 and has a PCIe 2.0 slot , which seems very rare these days. It's on sale for about $80 online, but doesn't have as many features such as fan headers, rear panel I/O ports, a good heatpipe/heatsink chipset cooling system as my current board. It does have a P45/ICH10 chipset while my current board is P35/ICH9.

I'm also interested in going to a E8400 or Q8400 chip if I can get a few more years out of this build. Is it worth spending about $80 to get the new mobo? Is it worth spending the around $260 for both to get some more life out of these components. Would I be better off just waiting to build my next system?

What is your opinions and experience on this?
 
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Sandy Bridge and socket AM3 or AM3+ boards require DDR3 memory. You may be able to use DDR2 with an AM2+ board and some of AMD's current CPUs, but you would have no upgrade path beyond the current AMD CPUs. In the long term you're probably best off just getting the more current tech with DDR3 memory.
You won't lose any performance with a 4770 on PCI-E 1.0. Current high end single GPU cards will at most barely saturate PCI-E 1.0, you'd only hit a significant bottleneck if you tried running a current dual GPU card like a Radeon HD 6990 or GTX 590 in a 1.0 slot.

I'd say save up some money for a new build. There isn't much point in investing money in LGA 775 anymore, a lot of the time the CPUs are so expensive that you would get better bang for your buck with a new CPU/Motherboard combo. $260 for a new 775 CPU and mobo simply isn't worth it. You would get much better performance with an 1155 board and an i3 2100, and that would probably cost less, even factoring in the need for new RAM.
 

gamer30

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Thanks for the welcome and the responses. I didn't think it was worth the money, but didn't realise that I could get a new combo for less either. I have another question though, will a sandy-bridge or newer AMD cpu run with DDR2 memory? I sadly upgraded my memory a few months ago when I upgraded to Win7. I have 8GB of DDR2 Corsair RAM now.
 
Sandy Bridge and socket AM3 or AM3+ boards require DDR3 memory. You may be able to use DDR2 with an AM2+ board and some of AMD's current CPUs, but you would have no upgrade path beyond the current AMD CPUs. In the long term you're probably best off just getting the more current tech with DDR3 memory.
 
Solution
Yes as said an AM2+ Motherboard would run an AM3 CPU which could be the best upgrade from a budget point of view.
Depends on what you have now and what you want from the upgrade.

Some people cant or wont afford the latest and greatest and are constantly a generation behind, there is nothing wrong with this approach as far as im concerned.
A 4770 and a decent AM3 CPU will play almost any game out at medium to high settings on a 1920 x 1080 monitor.
I know this to be a fact as that was what my last system was.

Mactronix :)
 
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