AM3+ board with PCI-E 3.0?

[jmerithew1987]

Hello everyone. I'm currently looking into helping my friend build a PC. Last computer I built was about 18 months ago so I'm trying to get my knowledge up to date. She's more of an AMD fan than Intel, so I've been looking into AM3+ motherboards.

The issue I'm running into is I can't find any AM3+ boards with a PCI-E 3.0 slot. I was wondering if anyone knew why this is? At first I thought they were holding off on PCI-E 3.0 for the next socket motherboards, but I came across a lot of articles stating that Steamroller is going to be using the AM3+ socket. If they're going to be using this particular socket for so long why not release some PCI-E 3.0 mobos?

I've always been an AMD fan myself, same as her, but this dilemma is making me consider rrcommending an Intel CPU so she can get the most out of her graphics card.

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

The issue I'm running into is I can't find any AM3+ boards with a PCI-E 3.0 slot.

That's because there aren't any.

Not a huge deal, though (at least not yet). No single current 3.0 card (except for possibly the GTX 690) is truly bottlenecked by 2.0, currently. It's a 1% difference, at most.

3.0 really matters more for super high end SLI/Crossfire setups (we're talking something like 2 or more 680's or two or more 7970's).

Don't worry about it.

 

[jmerithew1987]

OK. I'm looking at either at HD7850 or an HD7870. I'm trying to find a decent motherboard with 2 slots
so she can add a 2nd card in the future if the system needs a bit of a performance boost.. I haven't had
a chance to ccompare PCI-E 2.0 to 3.0, however I do remember there being a decent difference between PCI-E and PCI-E 2.0, so I had assumed 3.0 would be the best way to go.

 

[kitsunestarwind]

PCIe 3.0 is only really useful for Multi GPU configurations that do not have access to a full 16 PCIe lanes per GPU,

 

[jmerithew1987]

Thank you for the help. I may be able to cut down on the cost now. She'll like that

 

[jmerithew1987]

Best answer selected by jmerithew1987.

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

You're welcome.

 

[Etaelle]

At the time of writing this response there is one. It's one of the Sabertooth 990fx boards from Asus. Here's a link to it on Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131969