New graphics card in old board.

I have a 3 year old PC with a Asus Striker Extreme. My Geforce 8800 GTS has just decided to die. Even worse I bought it from Komplett.co.uk so if it's still on warranty, the process is going to be an utter pain (komplett uk went out of business a while ago).

I'm fighting an urge to purchase a completely new build right now and instead just replace the graphics card. I think my Striker Extreme only supports PCI express 1.0. If I stick a more recent PCI-E 2.0 graphics card in there am I going to have problems? I've read that 2.0 cards are backwards compatible and this would be a step towards a full rebuild at a later date. I'm thinking a GTX 460 as that's what's recommended as being good value in this months PCGamer.

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Originally Posted by cruentus

I have a 3 year old PC with a Asus Striker Extreme. My Geforce 8800 GTS has just decided to die. Even worse I bought it from Komplett.co.uk so if it's still on warranty, the process is going to be an utter pain (komplett uk went out of business a while ago).

I'm fighting an urge to purchase a completely new build right now and instead just replace the graphics card. I think my Striker Extreme only supports PCI express 1.0. If I stick a more recent PCI-E 2.0 graphics card in there am I going to have problems? I've read that 2.0 cards are backwards compatible and this would be a step towards a full rebuild at a later date. I'm thinking a GTX 460 as that's what's recommended as being good value in this months PCGamer.

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PCIe 2.0 was designed from the gorund up to be backwards compatible with PCIe 1.0
I have a PCIe 2.0 Radeon 4870 in my PCIe 1.0 Asus P5K-E motherboard and have had no problems whatsoever.

My 8800GT is a 512MB G92 version and hence PCIe 2.0, and I started off using it in a PCIe 1 motherboard with no problems. In the early days of PCIe 2 there were supposed to be rare occasions when things didn't work, but this is all mature technology now so I really wouldn't worry!

Thanks for the reassurance guys.

Next question:
I've tried doing a search to find the power demands of my graphics cards but am coming up empty.
Have graphics card power demands significantly increased or will I be ok with my 520W?

If anything graphics cards have been reducing in power consumption over the last few years (with the notable exception of the GTX480, that is ;) ). The only issues I could forsee with your 520W power supply are: 1) if it's a generic / non-brand / OEM PSU (the quality might not be great and the capacity might be overstated), 2) depending on how old it is it might be a bit light on the 12V rails (older PSUs tend to be heavier on the 3.3V and 5V rails), and 3) if it's old it *will* have aged and become less efficient and more likely to fail.

However, all these points are relative, and with a modern mid-range GPU likely to consume less than 150W*, I don't think you'll have any problems.

*EDIT: A quick wikipedia check informs me that the 768MB GTX460 has a TDP of 150W, and a 1GB GTX460 has a TDP of 160W. Normal gaming, however, tends not to load the cards to the extreme - it takes an intensive benchmark like Furmark to do that.

that's really helpfuly information scaryjim - very much appreciated
my psu is a corsair HX520 so i'm confident it'll do the job

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Originally Posted by cruentus

that's really helpfuly information scaryjim - very much appreciated
my psu is a corsair HX520 so i'm confident it'll do the job

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My PSU is a corsair HX520 and My Radeon 4870 uses more power than a GTX 260.
Peak power consumprion of my machine when gaming (Q6600, 8GB DDR2 RAM) is just over 300W at the wall socket. With a 10% loss of efficiency that makes it around 270 of the 520 Watts available.

There's nothing to worry about :)