Best PCI 2.0 Graphics Card

[keithmfr]

What is the best PCI 2.0 Graphics card to run with my AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE without bottlenecking it?

 

[lordnmb]

Can you be a little more specific? Are you running the 965 at stock speeds?

 

[keithmfr]

Overclocked to 4 Ghz.

 

[qbsinfo]

why pci 2.0? a pci 3.0 is backwards compatible.

 

[keithmfr]

I still don't want to bottleneck my CPU.

 

[Ironslice]

It won't make a difference. What's your budget? An GTX 660 should be fine.

 

[lordnmb]

Though it depends a lot on what resolution you will be using and what you're going to be running, at that speed I would think an HD 7870 would be a good bet.

I do think at higher resolutions with a 7900 series card you'd run into a few walls with games that are more CPU dependent, but I welcome discussion on that.

PCI Express 3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0, so there is no reason to seek out older hardware based *solely* on that.

If you want to go the nVidia route instead, wait for someone else to weigh in as I don't believe I have enough knowledge about their products to offer you a good recommendation.

 

[arnoldlouie]

Their is very little or no bottlenecks from a pcie 3.0 vc to a 2.0 vc. What you need to look at is the psu and budget. I would suggest getting the best card with some bottleneck than a weak card with no bottleneck. Their are games where a weak cpu will not affect the performance of the strong gpu.

 

[qbsinfo]

pci 3.0 cards do not use all the bandwidth of pci 2.0 except for [strike]maybe[/strike] multi card configurations. so thinking that a pci 2.0 card will make a difference is erroneous using that line of logic.

honestly that cpu overclocked to 4.0Ghz will not bottleneck ANY graphics card, now there are some games that will cause a load on it and slow down the overall performance but, it isn't really a bottleneck.

shoot for the moon and be happy.

 

[keithmfr]

So i'm thinking a GTX 660. I have 8GB of RAM, should I upgrade to 16GB?

 

[lordnmb]

pci 3.0 cards do not use all the bandwidth of pci 2.0 except for [strike]maybe[/strike] multi card configurations. so thinking that a pci 2.0 card will make a difference is erroneous using that line of logic.

honestly that cpu overclocked to 4.0Ghz will not bottleneck ANY graphics card, now there are some games that will cause a load on it and slow down the overall performance but, it isn't really a bottleneck.

shoot for the moon and be happy.

Exactly right. For the most part, when it comes to game performance, he is still going to be more limited by the GPU than anything else.

 

[lordnmb]

So i'm thinking a GTX 660. I have 8GB of RAM, should I upgrade to 16GB?

Generally speaking 8 should really be fine, though I can't say with certainty as I have no idea what you use your computer for.

 

[qbsinfo]

So i'm thinking a GTX 660. I have 8GB of RAM, should I upgrade to 16GB?

no reason to unless you are running a virtual machine or editing large videos.

 

[keithmfr]

Best answer selected by keithmfr.