Do any current graphics cards take advantage of PCI-E 2.0?

[Red Hawk]

I'm wondering this because my current motherboard only has PCI-E 1.0 so any future upgrades would be limited to that. Have we reached the point where PCI-E 1.0 would bottleneck certain graphics cards? If so, how high-end do you have to go to hit that bottleneck?

 

[CurseTheSky]

PCI-E 1.0 is equivalent to PCI-E 2.0 at half the bandwidth. So PCI-E 1.0 x16 is equal to PCI-E 2.0 x8.

With that said, PCI-E 2.0 x8 (and hence PCI-E 1.0 x16) is plenty sufficient for modern graphics cards (usually 1-2% performance loss). Even PCI-E 2.0 x4 only has a ~5-7% performance loss.

 

[happy medium]

No not yet, it does drop fps about 5% if your using dual gtx580's and a 30 inch monitor with tons of aa.
You are probrobly good untill the high end dual gpu's hit next month, then it might make some difference.

How many of us are gonna run a 700$ card in a pci-e 1.0 slot? not many.

 

[zerocool84]

No not yet, it does drop fps about 5% if your using dual gtx580's and a 30 inch monitor with tons of aa.
You are probrobly good untill the high end dual gpu's hit next month, then it might make some difference.

How many of us are gonna run a 700$ card in a pci-e 1.0 slot? not many.

Yea the people that worry usually aren't the ones that would be affected anyways.

 

[Patmage]

PCI-E 1.0 is equivalent to PCI-E 2.0 at half the bandwidth. So PCI-E 1.0 x16 is equal to PCI-E 2.0 x8.

With that said, PCI-E 2.0 x8 (and hence PCI-E 1.0 x16) is plenty sufficient for modern graphics cards (usually 1-2% performance loss). Even PCI-E 2.0 x4 only has a ~5-7% performance loss.

Actually wouldn't PCI-E 1.0 x16 be closer to PCI-E 2.0 x5? 2.5GT/s compared to 8GT/s. Even then you are right with the performance lose though, it is very minimal for anything other then very high resolutions(over 1920x1200) or multi monitor setups.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Memory heavy games would be the ones most affected - the ones transferring more data over the PCI-E bus.

I would suspect the upcoming 6990 and 590 to utilize 2.0 a noticeable amount.

 

[taltamir]

technically, it is providing a bottleneck for some operation, as there is a performance difference...
in practice, that translates to only a few percent points in performance difference as people here have already said.

As such, I wouldn't fret about it too much. That being said, as cusideabelincoln said, there might be some specific games will suffer more.
And I have yet to see any testing done with the newest top of the line cards.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Actually wouldn't PCI-E 1.0 x16 be closer to PCI-E 2.0 x5? 2.5GT/s compared to 8GT/s. Even then you are right with the performance lose though, it is very minimal for anything other then very high resolutions(over 1920x1200) or multi monitor setups.

Pretty sure PCI-E 2.0 is 5GT/sec. PCI-E 3.0 was supposed to be something like 8GT/sec.

 

[Patmage]

Pretty sure PCI-E 2.0 is 5GT/sec. PCI-E 3.0 was supposed to be something like 8GT/sec.

Oh you are right. I was confusing bandwidth with base clock speed.