Solved pcie 2.0 video card on pcie 1.1 slot

[lorenz417]

I am planning to upgrade my video card. I saw this one from Nvidia. Geforce GTS 450. I checked the specs and i saw the "bus" and it says PCI-E 2.0 x 16. My motherboard(Asus P5G41T-MLX3) has PCIe x16. I also have researched that the PCIE is backward compatible meaning the GTS 450 is compatible with my mobo. Now, my question is, will my mobo which has pcie 1.1 only be a bottleneck for GTS 450? if so, what video will you recommend so i can play new games like need for speed shift 2 unleashed?

 

[speedgamer01]

I don't think different versions would bottleneck that much that you could notice.. What are your system specs and what resolution are you willing to play it?

 

[speedgamer01]

Bandwidth information:

Capacity per lane (each direction): 16 lane slot (each direction):

• v1.x: 4 GB/s (40 GT/s) << my GTS 450 scores 25 GT/s
• v2.x: 8 GB/s (80 GT/s)
• v3.0: 16 GB/s (128 GT/s)

So there would be bottlenecking only with a much more powerful card... but not with this guy

Also make sure that your psu has a 6 pin (or 4+2 pin special) power connector for the card.

 

[lorenz417]

do you mean that GTS 450 will perform faster into a pcie 2.0 slot than pcie 1.0? would you notice the difference if i insert it into pcie 2.0?

processor: intel core 2 duo 2.4Ghz
RAM: 2GB
resolution: 1440 x 900
Harddisk: 500gb

 

[speedgamer01]

You would get the same performance with pcie 1.0 and 2.0 slots in this case.

I strongly recommend you to add some more memory (ram) to the system, is it ddr2 or ddr3 ram? Are you planning to upgrade any other parts of the PC, or you just want a card and nothing else?

 

[lorenz417]

wow! Thanks for that info. I was really concerned about that pcie compatibilities. I'm not rich that's why i want to get the fullest out of my buck

Btw, my RAM is ddr3. for now, i would prioritize first the video card. i am also planning to overclock my intel core 2 duo because i still have no budget for that. Do you know a link on how to overclock cpu?

 

[speedgamer01]

I haven't read the whole guide, but it seems pretty handy for beginners.

Also check out some youtube videos. These videos are coming from a reliable guy as well





Good luck with the whole machine! Open a thread in the chillout section when you will get to the point of ram question or overclocking please

Cheers

 

[lorenz417]

thank you! i will now mark this as solved

 

[Wishmaster]

Yes, the short of it is that PCI 1.1 is equal to PCI 2.0 running at x8.


Thing is, most single modern GPUs still do not saturate a 2.0 lane yet, not even a GTX 580.

From the tests Ive seen, the only cards that start showing a performance hit at x8, are the Dual GPUs on a single card.

So running that card on a PCI 1.1 should not hurt anything at all.

The worst case scenario, you might loose 1-2 FPS, but I doubt it would even be noticeable.