PCIe and PCIe 2.0

[Zaylin]

Ok Im still leaning some of the basic hardware stuff,and right now I am looking to purchase a 9800gt. But what I have noticed is that most of the 9800GTs are PCIe 2.0. My question is: Will a PCIe 2.0 video card work in a PCIe slot? thanks

[-RK]

Yes.

There were some compatibility problems with PCI-e 1.0, but most boards used 1.1 anyway.

[OSDCrusher]

PCI-E 2.0 doesn't come into play if you have one video card, only if you have crossfire or sli enabled.

[Radiator]

PCI-E 2.0 doesn't come into play if you have one video card, only if you have crossfire or sli enabled.

Doesn't make much of a difference even with a HD 4870 X2 or a GTX295 lol .

[OSDCrusher]

True. Those cards are so fast, that it doesn't give you that much of a benefit.

[Radiator]

I think you've got the idea all backwards . If it doesn't limit those cards it doesn't limit ANY cards , because those are the most powerful cards on the market . The more powerful the card is the more it should limit it ... however it doesn't , because even those cards aren't powerful enough to make that amount of bandwidth limiting .

[-RK]

More specifically, the data that is moving between the card and the CPU is much larger but it's still not enough to show a significant fps difference between 1.1 and 2.0.

And it does come into play with a single card by the way. PCI-e 2.0 refers to an update to the specifications of the PCI-Express standard, not the number of cards installed. It basically doubled the bandwidth of pci-e 1.1.

[ultima]

it was how agp 4x vs agp 8x was for awhile

only until later cards did 8x show a need over 4x agp
and it wasn't that much faster

agp 16x was coming, then pci 1.1 stole the show :)

pci 1.1 has so much bandwidth...it made agp 16x look slow

the biggest thing for pci 2.0, is the amount of power supplied from the
motherboard, i think its double what pci 1.1 is.

i'd have to go recheck, too tired to do that now

[-RK]

Yes, it did that also, but most cards don't require it for backwards compatibility's sake.