Question about 570 or 6950 or 6970

[OpenToSuggestions]

Hey all.
I have a high end gaming rig - Please see sig (although due to current bios not liking 4ghz it is at 3.8ghz).
I am looking to buy a new graphics card on Wednesday.

My question is are the latest cards going to held back as my graphics pci slot will run at 8x not 16x if I am using USB and/or Sata3 (although currently I am not).

I won't be looking at a dual gpu card and I have checked reviews of older cards such as the 5870 running at 1x, 4x, 8x, 16x and even 4x seems to be generally fine.

I have always kept the pci bus at 100mhz, would increasing it to say 105mhz result in the bandwidth of the 8x being increased?

Just looking for some comments.
Thanks in advance .

 

[Cleeecooo]

Not by much. Have a look on the net at comparisons. I cant find it again but there is something out there

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

Not by much. Have a look on the net at comparisons. I cant find it again but there is something out there

Literally just looked at the 5870 one. Said that 8x lost 2%, 4x lost 5% and 1x only lost 25% (taking away 15/16th of the bandwidth only loses 25% of the fps).

As the new amd cards will be better than the 5870 I was wondering if this issue is something I need to be concerned with. I realise that none of the general public know how fast the new cards are yet though.

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

Any other comments anyone?

 

[opethdisciple]

By the time your looking at building a *high end gaming rig, why not just get a decent mobo with 16x pcie 2 support?

Thats what I would do.

 

[flopper]

if you buy a card, you wont notice it.
if you play at 1920x1200 or lower, any of those cards will run so good.
Buy the one with the price and features you like.

 

[varkanoid]

Hi

I have just got the GA-P55A-UD3 and learnt about the 8x PCIE 2.0 bandwidth when using SATA 6gb on this board which is what I am about to do. Done a bit of research and from what I have read the switch from 16x to 8x PCIE on a single monitor system you will see no difference. It only really matters if you have a multi monitor setup.

From what I learnt the likes of Asus and Gigabyte added the Marvell chipset to their boards for Sata 6 as a fix/work around because the Intel P55 does not support USB 3 or Sata 6. For instance on the GA-P55-UD3 USB3 is powered by a NEC chip and SATA 6 by the Marvell chip. The X58 chipset however does give you full PCI bandwidth as that chipset is implemented fine with USB3 and SATA 6.

It also means running cards in Crossfire or SLI on these boards are not too brilliant. So as it turns out like me I run single monitor, dont use crossfire or SLI and I should be okay. Expecting my SATA 6 drives tomorrow which I am going to RAID just to see what its like and as I've never done it before.

I've currently got a 1gb GTX 460 and it plays everthing on full visuals 1920 x 1080 I currently play so I dont really need to upgrade although tempting by what will happen this week.

Looking at the GTX 570's maybe as I dont really want to go with ATI again just from crappy experiences in the past.

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

By the time your looking at building a *high end gaming rig, why not just get a decent mobo with 16x pcie 2 support?

Thats what I would do.

No i3/i5 rig can do 16x graphics with USB3 or Sata 3, only the i7 can.

Thanks for the replies guys. Not bothered about which brand of card I buy I will but the pricing hints of £230 from Gibbo for the 6950 looks good to me!

 

[Mr Krugga]

I did some tests with my 5850 and the loss in performance was < 3%.