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Thread: How much will PCI-e 1.0a hold back a newer graphics card?

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    How much will PCI-e 1.0a hold back a newer graphics card?

    I'm looking at buying a new system in fits and starts over the next 3-4 months. Right now my aging ATI 4870 512MB is struggling on newer games at 1920x1280 (as I said in the thread about graphics RAM), so I was going to get a new graphics card within a month or so and then think about a new mobo/CPU/RAM once Ivy Bridge is available. For the graphics I was thinking of getting an nVidia GTX 570 1280MB.

    Thing is, my current motherboard is only PCI-e 1.0a x16. It's not SLI/Crossfire enabled, so i'm not intending on sticking 2 cards in there at any point. I know the card I have already is supposed to be PCI-e 2.0, but at the time I saw reviews that said that it didn't really need it, it didn't gain much from it. But today graphics cards have got that much faster and it probably *does* make a difference. I don't want to spend around £300 on a graphics card if i'm going to lose about 30% of the projected performance by combining it with a Core 2 Quad and PCI-e 1.0a as opposed to an i5 and PCI-e 2.0. If it's going to be hobbled that much i'll just wait until i've got the cash to buy the whole thing at once and then maybe i'll either get the card cheaper or get a better card for my money. On the other hand if i'm only losing 5-10% performance for a few months until I upgrade the rest I can deal with that.

    So does anyone out there have experience of how much the card will be bottlenecked by the CPU and/or the PCI-e bus on a 1.0a motherboard? Is it worth me upgrading now, or should I leave it a couple months?

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    DILLIGAF GoNz0's Avatar
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    Re: How much will PCI-e 1.0a hold back a newer graphics card?

    i dare place a bet the entire system would be a bottleneck.

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    off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.

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