Confused about PCIe 2.0 vs 2.1

[RubyRawd]

First of all, thank you for any input here. Tried to use the search function and stickies but didnt really see what I wanted.

I am searching for a video card at the moment that I can afford and work with my motherboard.

Motherboard:ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 AM3 AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX AMD
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1075T Thuban 3.0GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT75TFBGRBOX
Ram: 2 x G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBXL
SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-60G 2.5" 60GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

To be honest, friends helped me build this but they know nothing about video cards and trying to find a good video card for it has proved difficult. Most "good" rated cards I read about are 2.1 but I can't figure out if they are backwards compatible or not.

So what is a good option for a video card? I had wanted the video card used in the medium holiday build that is posted under guides here but it is 2.1 and i can only seem to find GeForce that are 2.0 and no radeons (was told its a better option) I'll stop rambling now. Thanks.

 

[Anarchist420]

Any PCI-e 2.1 card will work in a PCI-e 2.0 slot and vice versa.

 

[RubyRawd]

Really? When I was reading about the differences on wiki it said:


"PCI Express 2.1 supports a large proportion of the management, support, and troubleshooting systems planned for full implementation in PCI Express 3.0. However, the speed is the same as PCI Express 2.0. Unfortunately, it breaks backwards-compatibility between PCI Express 2.1 cards and some older motherboards. Most motherboards sold currently come with PCI Express 2.0 connectors."



Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

 

[IGemini]

"PCI Express 2.1 supports a large proportion of the management, support, and troubleshooting systems planned for full implementation in PCI Express 3.0. However, the speed is the same as PCI Express 2.0. Unfortunately, it breaks backwards-compatibility between PCI Express 2.1 cards and some older motherboards. Most motherboards sold currently come with PCI Express 2.0 connectors."

That's an annoyingly vague clause, such I'll probably edit the page myself. It's referring to compatibility with motherboards that have PCI-E 1.0.

 

[RubyRawd]

Ahh okay, thanks for the insight, now i understand better!