Question regarding PCI-E 2.0 and 3.0

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UNCDoug

Junior Member
Dec 1, 2013
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So I'm ready to ditch my GTX 465 card that has done admirably over the years, and I found a GTX 970 that I've settled on.

Question is, I have a mobo that is only PCI-Express 2.0 and of course the new 970's and 980's are all 3.0.

So my question is, how much performance should I still expect even without the 3.0 motherboard capibility? In case if anyone asks, upgrading mobos is not a possibility at the moment.

Thanks in advance.
 
Black Octagon

Black Octagon

Golden Member
Dec 10, 2012
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Performance hit is only a few negligible percent, unless you are running 3- or 4-way SLI
 
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UNCDoug

Junior Member
Dec 1, 2013
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Oh no, just one lone 465 I've thought about putting into SLI for a while, but never did.

Now for a bigtime upgrade!
 
psolord

psolord

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Sep 16, 2009
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The real question here is what is the rest of the system that was equipping an old 465.

I wouldn't install a 970 on anything older than an OC Lynnfield.
 
psolord

psolord

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Sep 16, 2009
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Unless you intend to put some very specific gpu load on that 970, ie other than games, your cpu will fall short for this card.

Ahhh if only ram could process stuff.... :p

For games a 670 would be more than enough for this cpu. Unless you intend going to 4k gaming and have no more than 30fps framerate target.
 
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UNCDoug

Junior Member
Dec 1, 2013
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It's a stopgap until I can do a real upgrade. And it should suffice on what I have now and what's coming out for the next year or so.

I really didn't feel like upgrading anything until I was playing Arkham Origins a couples weeks ago and the slowdown got bad when I was in a fight with a lot of bad guys. Also noticed some clipping on Borderlands too. That's what finally made me jump.
 
SteveGrabowski

SteveGrabowski

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Oct 20, 2014
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I don't think there is even a 1% difference between PCIE-2.0x16 and PCIE-3.0x16 with any single video card on the market right now. I can't recall exactly where I saw the specific gaming benchmark that I'm thinking of done, but any FPS difference seemed to be within the margin of error of the test.
 
SteveGrabowski

SteveGrabowski

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Oct 20, 2014
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UNCDoug said:
Well, I'm gonna throw it in a new build in a year or two, and will probably SLI it, so it's good for now.
Click to expand...

That's a lot to pay $350 to get $150 worth of performance now if you're not going to be able to fully use the card for a year or two.
 
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UNCDoug

Junior Member
Dec 1, 2013
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SteveGrabowski said:
That's a lot to pay $350 to get $150 worth of performance now if you're not going to be able to fully use the card for a year or two.
Click to expand...

Well, I usually upgrade every five years, and this current PC is at year five, but finances are tight and I wanna at least update some components to their max and then some.
 
toyota

toyota

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Apr 15, 2001
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UNCDoug said:
SLI it in the new system in a year or two. Not this one.
Click to expand...
I know what you meant. its beyond silly to get a 970 or especially 980 to use in system for a year or two that wont even let you get but about half of what a card like that can do. heck your cpu is playable limitation in some games anyway. in a year or two will will have had no telling how many gpus come out so you would have done nothing but get gtx760 performance at best during that time while having those cards plummet in value. we will have mid range cards giving 970 and 980 performance by the time you get a cpu that can actually utilize the cards you have during that time.

get a card appropriate for your system then when you decide to get a more modern pc a year or two from now then get a nice graphics card at that time.
 
SteveGrabowski

SteveGrabowski

Diamond Member
Oct 20, 2014
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UNCDoug said:
Well, I usually upgrade every five years, and this current PC is at year five, but finances are tight and I wanna at least update some components to their max and then some.
Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat, with a CPU that bottlenecks high end graphics cards (Pentium G3258 overclocked to 4.4GHz). My first inclination was to buy the GTX 970 right now and upgrade to an i5 in a year, but after doing an enormous amount of research I found anything more powerful than about an R9 270 or GTX 750Ti will be bottlenecked to hell by my Pentium. Ended up ordering an R9 290 and I will upgrade to an i5 within the next month or two (and no later), because the choice was to either play new games with a 30FPS cap with a G3258 (whether I bought a $100 GTX 750Ti or a $350 aftermarket GTX 970) or to bite the bullet now and buy both a high end video card and a decent Core i5 and be able to hit mostly 60 FPS.

I mention my G3258 since a quick look at cpuboss has it pretty much equal, at stock 3.2 GHz, to a Phenom II x4 920 (2.8GHz) in multithreaded benchmarks. I know cpuboss isn't the most reliable source, but in a 2 minute search that's what I turned up.
 
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SteveGrabowski

SteveGrabowski

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Oct 20, 2014
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toyota said:
in a year or two will will have had no telling how many gpus come out so you would have done nothing but get gtx760 performance at best during that time while having those cards plummet in value. we will have mid range cards giving 970 and 980 performance by the time you get a cpu that can actually utilize the cards you have during that time.
Click to expand...

Exactly. In a year maybe the GTX 970 is a $240 GPU like a GTX 770 and in two maybe it's worth $150 like what GTX 670's go for on ebay.
 
SteveGrabowski

SteveGrabowski

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Oct 20, 2014
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Also, why 16GB of RAM? Or did you already buy that back in 09-10 or so when DDR3 was dirt cheap?
 
Black Octagon

Black Octagon

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Dec 10, 2012
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SteveGrabowski said:
I don't think there is even a 1% difference between PCIE-2.0x16 and PCIE-3.0x16 with any single video card on the market right now. I can't recall exactly where I saw the specific gaming benchmark that I'm thinking of done, but any FPS difference seemed to be within the margin of error of the test.
Click to expand...


Maybe you're thinking of the write-up that Anandtech did a few weeks after their original 7970 review
 
S

SPBHM

Diamond Member
Sep 12, 2012
5,066
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some situations can show an advantage for 3.0

ryse_1600_900.gif


but with a PII 2.8GHz this is not even worth considering, and most games are not anything like this one


perfrel_1920.gif


http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/21.html
 
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