Can my system handle a GTX680?

[erwinna]

Hello,

I would like to know if its worth upgrading to the GTX680 on my system. I do a fair bit of gaming, etc. but want to make sure I dont bottleneck if I do upgrade. My main concern is my mobo really. Any advice would help. I have been reading other posts on this but would like to know specific to my build

Here are my specs:

Core i7-2700K Unlocked Processor

GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 Intel Z68 Motherboard DDR3

2 x HyperX Genesis 8GB DDR3-1600MHz

Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 GPU

Corsair Force Series 3 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s SSD

Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive 1TB, SATA 6Gbps, 7200 RPM, 32MB

Hydro H60 High Performance CPU Cooler

Rocketfish 80plus 700watt modular PSU (going to get rid of the peice of crap and get the Corsair Professional Series 750 Watt)

Silverstone raven 3 Chassis

 

[willard]

You're fine.

 

[inzone]

You have a top model cpu in the 2700k so if your motherboard can handle that then it certianly can handle a GTX 680. Your main concern should be with the power supply since that is what well power everything. It will be a good move to get rid of the Rocketfish and go with the Corsair. With the 680 and the 2700k you will be ready to play any game at any settings and resolution.

 

[erwinna]

thanks for the quick replies!

I know the GTX 680 supports the PCI-e 3.0 but is efficiently backwards compatible with my PCI-e 2.0 (according to many reviews/forums). But I am still unclear: If I were to upgrade the mobo to a 3.0 would I see a dramatic increase in performance?

 

[Sunius]

Your MOBO supports PCIe 3.0. It's your CPU that doesn't. Also, you probably won't see any increase in performance at all.

 

[erwinna]

Ahhh, ok ty. And pardon my noob-ness. I am just getting into understanding some of this stuff

 

[inzone]

The pci-e 3.0 is an increase in bandwidth of the pci-e slots so with the newer cards being released it will take a few model releases to notice a bandwith increase. Pci-e 2.0 slots have 500mb/s bandwidth per lane so a 16x slot has 8gb/s gandwidth, the pci-e slots will double that so you havs 16gb/s bandwidth for a 16x slot. You then have to look at the cards output capability to gage if it's going to overload the pci-e 2.0 slot and if it does then you will need the 3.o slot to accomadate the increase in bandwidth.
With the new Pci-e 3.0 slots you need three components , the cpu , motherboard and the video card all to be Pci-e 3.0 ready. So far we have the video card and the motherboard , we are waiting for the cpu. (Ivy Bridge)

 

[erwinna]

Best answer selected by Erwinna.

 

[erwinna]

amazing! thank you so much for your indepth answers, inzone ! I think I will go ahead with the GTX 680 upgrade because it sounds like it will give an all-around better gaming experience!