Search
Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Solved

Intel pentium, i3 series with pcie 3.0

Last response: in Components
Share
Register or log in to remove

payturr said:
This is true, if you use a Pentium/Celeron/i3, it'll use the slot but at PCI-e 3.0 8x, better known as PCI-e 2.0 16x.

PCIe 3.0 @ x8 is not "better known" as PCIe 2.0 @ x16, they are two different things and just happen to have roughly similar usable bandwidth.

PCIe 3.0 lanes run at 8Gbps each (x8 = 64Gbps) while PCIe 2.0/2.1 lanes run at 5Gbps each (x16 = 80Gbps) and the card will run with as many lanes enabled as are available on the slot at whatever the highest speed both endpoints support.

Since the Pentium/i3 only support PCIe 2.1 and the motherboard likely supports x16, the board should be running PCIe 2.1 x16.

The only common case where a GPU may end up running whatever version of PCIe at x8 or x4 instead of x16 is for SLI/CFX where the 16-lanes GPU bus may get split between two x8 slots or a mix of x4 and x8. Some (very) high-end motherboards (~$600) have PCIe switches that allow running as many as four cards at PCIe 3.0 x16.
Related ressources
Ask the community

InvalidError said:
PCIe 3.0 @ x8 is not "better known" as PCIe 2.0 @ x16, they are two different things and just happen to have roughly similar usable bandwidth.

PCIe 3.0 lanes run at 8Gbps each (x8 = 64Gbps) while PCIe 2.0/2.1 lanes run at 5Gbps each (x16 = 80Gbps) and the card will run with as many lanes enabled as are available on the slot at whatever the highest speed both endpoints support.

Since the Pentium/i3 only support PCIe 2.1 and the motherboard likely supports x16, the board should be running PCIe 2.1 x16.

The only common case where a GPU may end up running whatever version of PCIe at x8 or x4 instead of x16 is for SLI/CFX where the 16-lanes GPU bus may get split between two x8 slots or a mix of x4 and x8. Some (very) high-end motherboards (~$600) have PCIe switches that allow running as many as four cards at PCIe 3.0 x16.


and how about the mobo's vendor said...
"PCI Express Gen3 Ready - Double PCIe 2.0 Bandwidth. PCIe 3.0, the next generation of 32GB/s transmission speed, doubles the bandwidth of previous generation interconnect"
sorry but i really confused...

Best solution

anthonie van hayu said:
sorry but i really confused...

The PCIe lanes that feed the main PCIe slot(s) is/are connected directly to the CPU. If the CPU only supports PCIe 2.1, the slots cannot go any faster than PCIe 2.1 regardless of what the motherboard says it may be capable of.

The motherboard may be "PCIe 3.0 ready" but that still requires a CPU and GPU that actually support that.

(All that "PCIe 3.0 Ready" means is that PCB traces from the CPU socket to the GPU slot(s) meet the signal integrity requirements for PCIe 3.0 and that the board has the necessary BIOS code to enable it if available on the CPU.)
Register or log in to remove
Ask the community
Read discussions in other Components categories
!