Please explain PCIe to me.

jimluu

Member
May 13, 2008
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Hi. I have an amd3200 and an asus a8n deluxe sli board. I'm thinking about upgrading my video card. I'm totally confused as to which cards I can use. Would some one kindly help me figure out which pcie bus I have (I think PCIe 16?) and which cards currently are compatible. I'm looking at the 8600gt cards. Some are PCI3 2.0, some are PCIx16.....I'm lost. Thanks in advance.
 

footballrunner800

Senior member
Jan 28, 2008
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Newer boards have a revision of the bus (2.0) that double the bandwidth. Pci express x16 2.0 is backwards compatible to the older pci express x16 (the one in your mobo) so any of the newer cards will work. There is no notable difference between the 2 because current generation cards do not fill the bandwith at 16x. Its kind of like SATA where hard drives are nowhere as fast to reach the limit of sata I speeds.
 

Quiksilver

Diamond Member
Jul 3, 2005
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Originally posted by: footballrunner800
Newer boards have a revision of the bus (2.0) that double the bandwidth. Pci express x16 2.0 is backwards compatible to the older pci express x16 (the one in your mobo) so any of the newer cards will work. There is no notable difference between the 2 because current generation cards do not fill the bandwith at 16x. Its kind of like SATA where hard drives are nowhere as fast to reach the limit of sata I speeds.

There is one exception.
If your board is only Pci-Express 1.0a compliant Pci-Express 2.0 cards will not work, at least there have been reported problems.

OP:
In your case your just fine.