Will a PCIe 1.0 card work in a 3.0 slot?

[Jedakiah]

I still have a PCIe 1.0 EVGA 8800 GTS. I would like to upgrade my CPU/Mobo/RAM but can not yet afford a decent graphics card. Can I get a PCIe 3.0 motherboard and slip in my old graphics card?

Edit: Found the answer: http://www.pcisig.com/news_room/faqs/pcie3.0_faq/#EQ6

 

[yougotjaked]

Yup that card will work just fine in a PCIe 3.0 slot.

 

[Jedakiah]

Yup that card will work just fine in a PCIe 3.0 slot.

Thank you for the quick response.

Please pardon my skepticism, but do you know someone who has tried it or do you have a source? When googling "backwards compatibility" "PCIe 1.0 card 3.0 slot" I did not find one source. Most people either wanted to do the reverse of this, or jump from 2.x to 3.0, not all the way from 1.0.

I am relatively convinced you are right; but, before blowing ~$700 on hardware I would like to 100% eliminate the risk of it being unusable on arrival.

 

[yougotjaked]

Thank you for the quick response.

Please pardon my skepticism, but do you know someone who has tried it or do you have a source? When googling "backwards compatibility" "PCIe 1.0 card 3.0 slot" I did not find one source. Most people either wanted to do the reverse of this, or jump from 2.x to 3.0, not all the way from 1.0.

I am relatively convinced you are right; but, before blowing ~$700 on hardware I would like to 100% eliminate the risk of it being unusable on arrival.

The only difference between PCIe 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc. is their bandwidth; they are all physically the same size

 

[Jedakiah]

Fair enough. I am going to assume the reason I could not google an answer to this question is because the answer is obviously yes. If you can throw a PCI card in a PCIe slot, why not this. Thank you good sir!

 

[yougotjaked]

Fair enough. I am going to assume the reason I could not google an answer to this question is because the answer is obviously yes. If you can throw a PCI card in a PCIe slot, why not this. Thank you good sir!

You're welcome! If you have any more questions feel free to send me a private message. Good luck with your new build

 

[Jedakiah]

Best answer selected by Jedakiah.