What are the Advantages, if any for PCIe 3.0? (Also Need Mobo help)

[SecretCobraz]

So I have been taking a look at PCIe 3.0 Lately. From what I have seen it supposedly has twice the bandwidth of PCIe 2, but current Gen GPUs can barley saturate a full x16 lane as is. I am looking at hardware for my next build and I have everything down for the most part.

However, I do want to know if not getting a 3.0 Ready Mobo might screw me over when it comes to SLI, and others.
SLI is very important to me as I do plan on upgrading.

What I know so far, (or at least what I have read) is Sandy Bridge can't take advantage of 3.0 but Ivy will. And there is no direct benefit from PCIe 3 over 2.

The Problem I am having is whether 3.0 will make a difference when it comes to SLI. As most of you know P67/Z68 can only Support a Maximum of 16 Lanes Total, so SLI would balance out @ x8 x8.

The Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z (My Preferred Choice) supposedly allows a Full 32 Lanes using an nForce Bridge/Chip. However I have seen thread after thread both confirming this and disputing it (grrrrrrr). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131760

There also exist P67/Z68 boards that do support 3.0 but it is useless with Sand Bridge, with no word if Ivy Bridge will be an LGA 1155 chip, along with the recent news Intel will be delaying Ivy.
Here is what I am talking about with Z68 PCI 3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157263

Basically, will 3.0 make a difference when it comes to bandwidth per card/slot. I do really like the idea of a 2700k with an Asus Maximus Extreme-Z, but I might be willing to upgrade to X79 if there are features with PCI 3 that might screw me over later on with Upgrading and SLI

My only other Question beyond is if the nForce Bridge on the previous mentioned Asus Board will guarantee me a Full 32 Lanes. I have heard that you need to put something like a sound card in the top slot to engage the nForce Bridge, then use the Bottom 3 slots in x16 x16, or x16 x16 x8.

No Problem for me as I plan on getting a PCIe FireWire Card so I can still transfer data from older (and very expensive) Camera systems I own that use it.

If your interested, here is what I have in mind currently:

Intel i7-2700K
Corsair H100
Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z
EVGA GTX 680 FTW 4GB (When it comes out)
Corsair DOMINATOR GT 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory
Corsair Force Series GT 120GB SSD
Cooler Master Cosmos II
Corsair 1200W
(And others like fans, OS, and extras)

 

[inzone]

You could consider a Sandy Bridge-E cpu with an X-79 chip based motherboard which will support a full 40 lanes for the Pci-e and tha's without the NF-200 chip. That will give you a natural 16x16x8 and an amazing x16 slot for each video card in SLI. Plus support for Pci-e 3.0.
This might be worth looking into.
The Ivy Bridge cpu's will be the 1155 socket and they may use the 2011 socket for later Ivy Bridge releases.

 

[Pinhedd]

Putting PCIe 3.0 on the Sandybridge-E chips was purely a matter of testing and future proofing. Intel probably wanted to get 3.0 rolled out and tested in case a fix was required before PCIe 3.0 speeds actually became necessary.

 

[SecretCobraz]

Putting PCIe 3.0 on the Sandybridge-E chips was purely a matter of testing and future proofing. Intel probably wanted to get 3.0 rolled out and tested in case a fix was required before PCIe 3.0 speeds actually became necessary.

Yea, considering all the newer GPUs coming out are 3.0 Compliant. I heard rumors Asus was either re-releasing the Maximus IV, or coming out with another Z68 Board that had 3.0, but I have yet to see anything official or credible.

You could consider a Sandy Bridge-E cpu with an X-79 chip based motherboard which will support a full 40 lanes for the Pci-e and tha's without the NF-200 chip. That will give you a natural 16x16x8 and an amazing x16 slot for each video card in SLI. Plus support for Pci-e 3.0.
This might be worth looking into.
The Ivy Bridge cpu's will be the 1155 socket and they may use the 2011 socket for later Ivy Bridge releases.

This is what I would be looking at for X79:

Asus Rampage IV and 3930K $1,500 vs Asus Maximus IV and 2700K $680

That is an extra $820 I see myself wanting for an extra GTX 680, rather than performance I honestly don't think will make a difference for what I am doing. As I mentioned above hopefully Asus will come out with a Z68 3.0 ready ROG Board, but I from what I have read PCI 3.0 won't make a measurable difference for a few years. It would be nice yes, but the nForce Bridge is just as good as what X79 has, and I just don't see myself spending that much on Mobo and CPU alone.

It's good to hear that there will be Ivy Bridge chips for 1155 so could upgrade later on. PCIe 3 does seem cool but by the time graphics are powerful enough to utilize all of that bandwidth and we start to see real performance and benefits over 2.0 it will be time for a new build and all the hardware we are talking about will be obsolete.

 

[Guest]

I think Toms here has an article testing the 7970 on pci-e 3.0 2/4/8/16... can't find it but i know it's here

 

[SecretCobraz]

I think Toms here has an article testing the 7970 on pci-e 3.0 2/4/8/16... can't find it but i know it's here

Yea I remember it; All of the 2.0 vs 3.0 Tests were within the Margin of error, meaning there was no detectable difference between the two.

In this thread we were mainly discussing PCIe bandwidth, and we came to the conclusion that while PCIe 3.0 has twice the bandwidth capacity of 2.0, you won't see GPUs that can take advantage of that much bandwidth for another few years or longer. So at the moment, there is no Advantage for PCie 3.0 over 2.0.