Can enyone explain does the 7970 or today high end graphics card uses full potentional on PCIe 2.0??From past couple of days i buy asus sabertooth p67 with (PCIe 2.0) and i5 2500k.and i wondering is this bad investment??,because this motherboard dosent have PCIe 3.0???? I planing to buy 7970.Will 7970 on p67 use full potential?Or is PCIe 3.0 marketing trick like sata 6.0??
Hello, For this time, PCI 3.0 + 6990/ GTX590 or 7970 = +5%/+8% gain compare to pci 2.0. It's Powerfull marketing "upgrade" for fasterssss computer
PCI-E 3.0 doesn't make a difference, as PCI-E 2.0 is nowhere near saturated yet :- http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/49646-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-review-21.html
Well, things are little bit complicated, but if you don't plan to upgrade your CPU with IvyBridge, then p67 should be as good (for HD7970), as Z68 Gen3 boards or future PCIe 3.0 ones. Else IvyBridge will use only x8 PCIe lines for external GPU. Reset of them (another x8) shall be disconnected, as no PCie 3.0 compliant switch is present. Educate yourself on the subject : http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Getting-Educated-on-the-Status-of-PCI-E-30/1448
PCI-E 3.0 gives no performance increase for single HD 7970 in games http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/49646-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-review-21.html But gives some improvement in computing http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/10 It might be different with Crossfire configuration, though. SATA3 6Gb/s might be useless for HDDs, but it gives a fair amount of improvement for fast SSDs.
Don't you need a pcie 3.0 motherboard hosting a pcie 3.0 cpu running a pcie 3.0 graphics card to know if it makes a difference or not. How can you comment on no difference if these 3 things have yet to come full circle? Regards
Nope, because now mobo vendors have to incorporate third-party PCIe splitters like PLX PEX8608 or NF200 for additional PCIe lines (SATA3, LAN, USB3, expansion slots) inducing latency, where PCIe 3.0 will double the internal bandwidth, rendering those chips useless.
U guys need to wait for Ivy Bridge release before making comments if PCIe 3.0 is faster or not cuz u need the IB cpu to show the full potential of wot the 40? lanes will be capable of.. (crossfire/sli will gain from this) until IB comes out nobody can make that judgement on how fast it will be. Try talking to somebody from Intel (like i have) before making any judgements. In other words nobody knows until IB is fully tested with the next gen cards and boards.. so far reviewers have only tested the new boards with a few 7970's. ---- The fact of the matter is that Ivy Bridge will handle the PCIe 3.0 interface directly, so the full benefits of PCIe 3.0 will be enabled when you plug one in. This means that even if you're the daring high-roller who likes to buy the latest and greatest, you'll still be stuck in second gear until Ivy Bridge comes along, at which time official support for PCIe 3.0 will begin. Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/14bYp)
It's always been the same with gpu slots, no gpu ever needed the fastest slots. Like AGP 4x and AGP 8x, everybody was like omg we gotta get AGP 8x! But there was no need for it. And current GPU's don't even need anything faster than PCI-e 2.0 8x, even 4x barely makes a difference.
slots arent just about peak bandwidth, they're about power management, how much gets sent to the card from the mobo, power off states, etc & like you said, we're barely using up pcie 2.0 8x & 4x is like 94% of 16x, but doesnt that mean pcie 1.0 4x is even worse, along with agp being too weak? so pcie3 is for the future, not that it's making pcie2 suddenly obsolete
The PCIE 3.0 tests were all done on Sandy Bridge-E / X79 boards which do support 40 lanes of pcie 3.0 directly at the CPU. When the SBE launched Intel winked and said "not officially" to 3.0 support because at the time there was no 3.0 cards to plug into the pcie slots to test them with. The review on anandtech shows clear gains for computing applications when switching from 2.0 to 3.0, just not a whole lot with games.
Yep! SandyBridge-E, like Core i7-3930K has some sort of PCIe 3.0 support, which can be switched on and off. Apparently PCIe 3.0 is broken in some of the chips, but good ones fully supported PCIe 3.0. So reviewers tested HD7970 on SandyBridge-E with working PCIe 3.0. First they disable it and do the test and then repeated them with PCIe 3.0 on. Looks like PCIe 3.0 FTW in GPGPU applications and not so much in games. But remember SandyBridge-E has a lot more PCIe lines to deal with in first place. So X79 mobo is hardwired as PCIe 2x16+1x8 slots for external GPUs, where P67 and Z68 mobos are configured as PCIe 2x8 GPU extension slots and PCIe switching IC is making one of them x16, when a single external GPU is present. So this IC is working like switchable wiring. When it is not capable of PCIe 3.0 switching, then both P67&Z68 slots are only x8 PCIe 3.0 in IvyBridge presence. Another benefit of having Gen3 mobo now is the guarantee that its PVR&PWM will support IvyBridge. This upcoming CPU may eventually have different Voltage Identification - VID, as 22nm CPU.
