Has anyone installed a PCI-e 3.0 card on a PCI-e 1.x mobo?

[omoore28]

The last update was like 4 years ago or more. Abit doesn't exist currently. PCIe was designed to be fully backwards compatible. So 3.0 works in 1.0 and 1.0 works in 3.0 etc

Theoretically, yeah.

Doesn't seem to be the case though, I've heard back from a number of people, including manufacturers that some won't. At this early stage it's impossible to know but it seems a 50/50 chance.

4 years ago may have included some sort of support for 2.0?

*edit, extra support*

 

[omoore28]

so, against my better judgement went ahead and bought the GIGABYTE 7970.

didnt work in my intended rig (Asus m2v mobo, athlon 64 4gb ddr2 ram) with pci-e 1.0 x16

however it DID work in my work desktop, an old fujitsu r630 xeon dual processor's, again with a pci-e 1.0 x16.

so the rule of thumb is - it's pot luck. maybe old amd mobo's have trouble with 3.0, maybe intel motherboards arre better at supporting 3.0 or maybe this intel mobo is just better than my M2V.

needless to say it was a nightmare transferring hard drives/useable RAM, pci cards to my new work desktop, but its done. i finally have a reasonably decent performing mining rig.

i wish i could help and provide a definitive answer. however it seems there just isn't one. thanks for everyones help. i am, in the end, glad i went for it.

 

[cmdrdredd]

It's entirely the BIOS. Two boards with different BIOS one can work other doesn't.

 

[taq8ojh]

It's entirely the BIOS. Two boards with different BIOS one can work other doesn't.

It entirely isn't. It's the card. I wish I had saved the article I read couple days ago where a guy elaborated why some 3.0 cards worked in PCIE 1.x slots and some didn't.

 

[taq8ojh]

Ha, I got it: http://www.overclock.net/a/the-final-answer-to-the-controversial-pcie-x16-version-compatibility

 

[snickersnack]

I've also had success using a PCI-e 3.0 GPU in a PCI-E 1.x motherboard.

XFX Radeon 7770 1GB (model# FX-777A-ZNF4)
Asus M2A-VM HDMI