PCI Express 2.0 Graphics Cards Tested

Absolute Benchmark Results

Radeon HD 3850

Clearly, Microsoft Flight Simulator X requires a lot of graphics bandwidth to provide high-detail textures in the system memory. A decrease of PCI Express bandwidth has a tremendous impact on frame rates here.

The new PCMark Vantage is mostly unimpressed by the bandwidth changes. Obviously, this test is mostly GPU bound, working out of the local frame buffer.