Will a cpu that's only compatible with pcie 2.0 run a 3.0 card?

That cpu supports pcie 3.0, it depends on the motherboard, but it's compatible with 3.0/2.0 pcie

pci-express is backwards compatible.

If I look halfway down the page it says it supports only 2.0? where did you see 3.0?

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_3820_proce...


"The chip features four computing cores with Hyper-Threading support working at 3.6GHz (3.8GHz max Turbo), 10MB of Level 3 cache memory, a quad-channel memory controller, and a built-in 40-lane PCI Express 3.0 controller."


At the time it was posted there was no motherboard with pcie 3.0
Now there's a lot of them with pcie 3.0

anyways is supports 3.0 even if it dint. pci-express 3.0 2.0 are compatible with 1.0

He's saying if it will run at 3.0 speeds, or at 2.0, it will run at 3.0 with pcie 3.0 motherboard x79, it's not official supported, but the i7-3820 can run pcie 3.0, but for now it's worthless, there's no card that take advantage of pcie 3.0, so any pcie 2.0 will run the pcie 3.0 top cards at maximum capability.
Probably in the future, some cards will really take advantage of the pcie 3.0

oh misunderstood. but doesnt the mobo give u the option of pciexpress 3.0 or 2.0. dint know it was cpu bound.

It's also cpu bond, if the cpu doesn't have a pcie 3.0 controller, it won't run at 3.0 on a motherboard with pcie 3.0 slots.
But then again, for now, there's no card that takes advantage of the pcie 3.0, so either running it at 3.0 or 2.0 will give the same performance.
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_...

thanks for clearing that up, i usually just buy a card thats pci express and works out of the box. also games barely are if anything faster on pci-e 2.0 than 1.0 so 3.0 is irrelevant at this point

Thanks for the help. My card is the 660ti and its made for pcie 3.0. there wasnt going to be a big performance hit running at 2.0 speeds. I just wanted to make sure the card would still work. The mobo has 3.0 slots. i was just worried about the cpu.

It's fine, pcie 3.0 is backwards compatible with previous versions, and there's no loss of performance, see the posts above.

ditto