Gen3 Motherboards and a PCI-E 2.1 card help.

[Deathwolf]

Hello everyone :awe:

Iam planning to upgrade my cpu, motherboard and memory, right now i have Intel DG41RQ and C2Q 9400 and 4gb kingston DDR2 memory. And iam going to keep my Gigabyte 6950OC which is PCI-E 2.1 card (they say cayman is a 3.0 card but it is disabled for power savings)

Basically iam waiting for Ivy Bridge 3570k and will get a Gen3 motherboard with it, but i have a serious question which is really bugging me.

Every Motherboard manufacturer says
2 x PCIe x16 Gen3 (x16, x8/8)
1 x PCIe x16 Gen2 (x4)
so does that mean my Radeon 6950 is going to run @ x4 only ?

and sorry my English is not very great , and if I ask a repeated question 😳

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

No.

In your example, the Gen3 motherboards will have 3 PCIe x16 slots. Two of them will be Gen3, the x4 slot will be Gen2.

You can put Gen2 video cards in Gen3 slots.

 

[Deathwolf]

No.



You can put Gen2 video cards in Gen3 slots.

Oh great, means my card will run at full x16
btw are you sure ?

 

[Lean L]

Oh great, means my card will run at full x16
btw are you sure ?

Yes.

 

[Deathwolf]

Then why is this PCI-E 2.0 x4 slot there ?
for raid controllers and such ?

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

It's still physically a PCIe x16 slot. It would just only run at PCI x4 speeds.

Useful if you have a Tri-SLI/crossfire setup.

 

[Deathwolf]

It's still physically a PCIe x16 slot. It would just only run at PCI x4 speeds.

Useful if you have a Tri-SLI/crossfire setup.

No no , I think its a non-GPU slot, like no graphics output slot, its for other peripherals.

Edit : yea its not for gpus

"giving enough space between the first two full-length PCIe for GPUs. However, in the x1, x16 (x8 in multi-GPU), x1, x1, x8, PCI, x4 setup, only the first two full length PCIe are for graphics output—the final one is a PCIe 2.0 x4 connector"

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5728/...ew-asrock-asus-gigabyte-msi-ecs-and-biostar/8