A PCIE Question.... | Forums

[Bearcat99]

Is a GPU that is PCIE 3.0 overkill on a board that is only PCIE 2.0? I am pretty sure the connector is the same and it will work.. but if the board won't handle the buss fully then I won't spend the money... That is my thinking... I have been looking at GPUs ad if I am looking to save a few bucks where I can.. I have gotten my rig pretty much set to:

AMD Fx-8150
ASUS M5A990Fx
CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F240GB3A-BK 2.5" 240GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Seagate 7200 RPM 1TB SATA HD
Win 7

I think I will go with a new case after all and for a P.S. I am looking at useing my current 800W supply and just buying another less pricey/powerful PS for my current rig which is still running on a 939 socket and won't need that much power since it will be rolling down to my son .. and for a cooler solution I am still debating the whole water kit vs air cooling. I am looking at the Antec Khuler 920, the Thermaltake Water 2.0 or the Zalman CNPS 20 ... but I was wondering about the whole PCIE thing ... I noticed that most of the PCIE 3.0 boards I saw were with Intel chipsets... Hmmmmmmm

[MAXMHZ1959]

As far as I understand it PCIe 3.0 will not show much of a difference compared to PCIe 2.x in games. Most if not all cards are PCIe x16. PCIe 3.0 has much higher bandwidth, but you will not benefit from this where gaming is concerned. Hardware-accelerated coding/decoding will benefit however (encoding/playing video and encryption/decription) as will other applications that support hardware acceleration on GPGPUs (CUDA/OpenCL)

[Bearcat99]

Thanks Max.. I decided to go with FX-777A-ZNF4 AMD Radeon HD 7770 Ghost Thermal Technology 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card as a GPU .. the price was right and it out benched the GTX550Ti I was going to get.. Once I finish paying for what I didnt pay cash for of all this I may get another one and X Fire them...

[MAXMHZ1959]

Looks like a great card. Only 128 bit internal memory bus width though. Just as an observation; The highest performance ATI cards have an 8 or 9 as 2nd digit in their type-name(HDx8xx/ HDx9xx). These will be a lot more expensive too however. Image quality with ATI is a lot better than with nVidia, nVidia has better drivers. A wider internal memory bus results in faster rendering/calculations and transfers. Just like single or double channel in system RAM does. It only comes into play seldom though. In general 128 bit should be fine.

[x6BL_Brando]

It wouldn't have been my first choice - or my second either The 128 bit bus, along with only 1Gb of VRAM is not particularly good for games these days.

I recently picked up a 256bit, 2Gb 6950 on ebay for £100 and it's really improved the performance in Rise of Flight, from a 1Gb 5870. The x770 series has never been much good even crossfired.

[Bearcat99]

Thanks for all your input guys ... I have decided to take that card back based on your input.. I have been trying to plan this upgrade so that any future upgrades to this system (like an extra GPU or extra RAM) will be maximized.. (one reason why I went with the 8150 for $40 more over the 8120 and the 8x2 16G as opposed to the 4 x 4) so I may be better spending a little extra today to make any upgrade I do more meaningful in the future so I may consider a 7850 .. or even a 69x0 ... I spoke to a few other people and many have said that two of these cards in SLI would be more powerful than a top of the line card.. but I am rethinking this.. even if I decide to keep that card.. Newegg has it for $10 less than I paid for it and I just got it Monday so if they wont match it.. back it goes..

[Bearcat99]

This may be my last upgrade for a long time actually so I am being very picky to work within the confines of my budget .. and get the most B4B anyway I stumbled across a great deal on NewEgg on an AMD card..XFX Double D FX-787A-CDFC Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card..
This card is going for $269 with a $30 rebate bringing it to $239.. and if you apply and are accepted on NewEgg as a preferred customer.. you will get an extra $20 knocked off the purchase bringing the final tally when it is all said and done to $219 ... This card probably won't be going for that price for at least another 2-3 years.. I was originally looking at a 7770 card.. but it had a 128 bit membus.. 1G of Ram and the clock was slower .. I was thinking about X fireing the card with another one since I was able to get it for $139 after a rebate.. but this is a bigger bang for buck move for me since I wanted to stick with AMD & Radeon.. so basically for $80 more I got a lot more card..

[gothkrieger]

I thought ATI Radeon cards were more complex to get IL2 running on them.

[gothkrieger]

@ Max
"Image quality with ATI is a lot better than with nVidia"
Can you quantify that statement somehow with some sort of example?

[x6BL_Brando]

I thought ATI Radeon cards were more complex to get IL2 running on them.

Ati have made a few drivers over the years which have affected IL2 in a negative way - but as they make driver updates every month it's not usually too long to wait for corrections.
The last problem-time I remember was back in early 2010, when a driver change made the briefing pages illegible. That was fixed eventually, by Ati.