PCI-E 2.0 or will a 1.xx mobo do?

Hi,

I'm looking at buying a cheap second hand mobo for a rig I'm building and was thinking of an Asus P5K-E. The only problem I can see is that this board is PCI-E 1.xx whereas the graphics card for this build is a HD4870, which is PCI-E 2.0.

Now, I've read some old threads about how there are hardly any cards that need the bandwidth available from PCI-E 2.0. But like I say, they were old threads.

Would my HD 4870 benefit from much from PCI-E 2.0 or would there be no difference from a PCI-E 1.xx mobo?

Cheers :thumbsup:

Bandwidth:

16x PCIe 1.1: 4GB/s
16x PCIe 2.0: 8GB/s

As 4870 has at max 3.6GB/s bandwidth it can be safe to assume that there won't be any difference. However if you get a 4870X2 card or crossfire the two then there is likely to be some performance loss.

This article will be of use to you:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...press_Scaling/

16x PCI-E 1.1 is essentially a 8x PCI-E 2.0 lane so like CTV posted, even with an 5870, the overall performance loss is only about 1%-2% oddly enough. Sounds too good to be true to me. Maybe I read something wrong.

My 975X based motherboard has its PCI-E slots permanently at 8X electrical even though they are 16X physical slots!! :(

OTH,an HD3870,HD4830 and 8800GTS 512MB don\'t seem to have been affected in performance IMHO.

Thanks! Just the info I was after

:hexlub:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jonny440

Hi,

I'm looking at buying a cheap second hand mobo for a rig I'm building and was thinking of an Asus P5K-E. The only problem I can see is that this board is PCI-E 1.xx whereas the graphics card for this build is a HD4870, which is PCI-E 2.0.

Now, I've read some old threads about how there are hardly any cards that need the bandwidth available from PCI-E 2.0. But like I say, they were old threads.

Would my HD 4870 benefit from much from PCI-E 2.0 or would there be no difference from a PCI-E 1.xx mobo?

Cheers :thumbsup:

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I have a P5k-E Wifi/AP and a 4870 1GB. If my PCIe 1.1 is holding anything back I'm yet to notice :)

Yep no issue, with would be more of an issue with a dual gpu crad but still not a great deal of performance loss.

p35 (so pci-e x16 1.1) and 9800gtx no issues here :)