sean5900xt Posted January 31, 2013 CID Share Posted January 31, 2013 I'm building a new desktop computer. I wasn't sure about how PCI Express 3.0 works. Right now the video cards im going to use are 2 Radeon HD 6850's. But in the future I would like to get a 7850 or better. I noticed the 7000 series cards say PCI Express 3.0. Does that mean that they require a motherboard with PCI Express 3.0, or they just take advantage of 3.0 if you have it but work with 2.0? I'm doing a AMD CPU build and I can't even find a motherboard that says it supports 3.0. Was just wondering about this. Thanks guys. CA3LE 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mudmanc4 Posted January 31, 2013 CID Share Posted January 31, 2013 I just a couple weeks ago went looking into this. Does AMD even support true 3.0 yet? I know a couple TMN members have been neck deep in this recently and should reply soon. CA3LE and sean5900xt 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TriRan Posted January 31, 2013 CID Share Posted January 31, 2013 3.0 video cards will work fine in a 2.0/2.1 motherboard all that will happen is the cards bandwidth will be limited by the motherboard as a bottleneck if you will I doubt you would even notice the difference though sean5900xt and CA3LE 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sean5900xt Posted January 31, 2013 Author CID Share Posted January 31, 2013 That's what I was wondering. It seems kind of weird AMD wouldn't have a chipset that could support it. My guess is that its backwards compatible with 2.0 it just doesn't move data as fast as 3.0. But yeah it would be nice to know for sure. Edit: Just saw TriRan's post. Thank you for the info man. That is what I was thinking. Glad to know though. And yeah I would think that the difference from 2.0 to 3.0 wont really make a difference for a while. CA3LE 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mudmanc4 Posted January 31, 2013 CID Share Posted January 31, 2013 I had the impression the difference between 2.0 and 3.0 was more than double the bandwidth ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sean5900xt Posted January 31, 2013 Author CID Share Posted January 31, 2013 I had the impression the difference between 2.0 and 3.0 was more than double the bandwidth ? Actually yeah you are right. After some research it seems 2.0 supports 8GB/s and 3.0 supports 15.75GB/s. I wouldnt mind getting a 3.0 motherboard for a little bit more money, but there isn't a single AMD motherboard that I can find that supports 3.0. That's pretty weird of AMD to not support it I think. But I'm not sure how much if any at the moment of how much difference it makes in terms of framerate. Just glad to see it is backwards compatible. One more quick question instead of making another post. Right now I have a Corsair HX 750 Watt powersupply picked out. The build is going to have a eight core AMD FX and two 6850's. Would the corsair HX 650 watt power supply be plenty for a while. Or should I just got with the 750? Price dif. is only 10 bucks but I was just wondering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buntz Posted February 1, 2013 CID Share Posted February 1, 2013 Here a article for you to read about PCI 2.0 vs 3.0. http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/07/18/pci_express_20_vs_30_gpu_gaming_performance_review/ Also here is the Power Supply Calculator I use. Give it a try. http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TriRan Posted February 1, 2013 CID Share Posted February 1, 2013 You are correct that the bandwidth is double but the place you will see that is when loading texture files into the video cards memory its not like your fps in games will more then double I doubt you'd see even 10 fps more and more wattage the better especially if you plan to get bigger video cards someday in the near future sean5900xt 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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