Help with new motherboard

amorphous

amorphous

amorphous

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Joined
12 Jul 2004
Posts
289
So I'm upgrading my graphics card from my gtx 275 to a new 680, but I have to change motherboards to support the pci express 3.0. Currently I'm using a asrock z68 which has been running my I-5 2500k 3.30ghz chip with 8gb of corsair DDR3 1600mhz dual channel kit. Ideally I'd like to stay with asrock as it been a great board And also keep the rest of my components as well. Can you suggest any boards to do the job?

Cheers
 
You don't need PCIe 3.0, it's backwards compatible and a single 680 won't saturate PCIe 2.0, so you won't lose out on performance.

I'd suggest overclocking your i5 2500K though, they overclock very well :) Do you have a 3rd party cooler?
 
Yeah I have a alaska cooler and fan. Keeps things pretty cool. Im pretty handy around computers but not very confident at overclocking! Might look up some guides!

Thanks for the help!
 
No problem. It's pretty easy with the i5's, usually they overclock to 4Ghz or so without any voltage increase [literally change the multiplier to x40 and that's it :p]

There are plenty of guides around anyway which will explain it better than me!
 
beejjacobs said:
You don't need PCIe 3.0, it's backwards compatible and a single 680 won't saturate PCIe 2.0, so you won't lose out on performance.
Click to expand...

+1

In fact, even if you got a board that supports PCIE gen3 (like a Z77 or many of the Z68 boards) then you couldn't actually use PCIE gen3 since your CPU only supports PCIE gen2 (and the graphics PCIE controller is on the CPU).

Therefore, to get true PCIE gen 3 you would need a new motherboard and CPU (either LGA2011 Sandy Bridge E + X79 or LGA1155 Ivy Bridge + Z77).

However, as beejjacobs mentions it really doesn't matter. A PCIE gen3 card like the GTX 680 will work perfectly well on a PCIE gen2 system like yours and for playing games it won't saturate the PCIE gen2 x16 link - so PCIE gen 3 doesn't offer any performance benefit in games.
 
amorphous said:
just another question, potentially thinking about splurging out on a gtx690. would that saturate the PCIe 2.0 slot as its a dual core card?
Click to expand...

To be honest, it may do. It obviously hasn't been released yet - so we can't know quite yet - but when it comes out on the 3rd expect a lot of reviews to look at it.

In previous nvidia dual-GPU cards they have cut down the top-end core to make it fit within the power/heat envelope of the card. However, in the case of the GTX 690 it seems to to be two proper GTX 680 GPUs (same number of cores, same memory bus width) just with a slight downclock (GTX 690 cores are clocked at 915MHz - boosted to 1019MHz, while the GTX 680 is 1006MHz - boosted to 1058MHz). Therefore, we can expect some serious performance out of this card - and considering the excellent performance of a single GTX 680, this may well saturate a PCIE gen2 x16 link.
 
amorphous said:
So I'm upgrading my graphics card from my gtx 275 to a new 680, but I have to change motherboards to support the pci express 3.0. Currently I'm using a asrock z68 which has been running my I-5 2500k 3.30ghz chip with 8gb of corsair DDR3 1600mhz dual channel kit. Ideally I'd like to stay with asrock as it been a great board And also keep the rest of my components as well. Can you suggest any boards to do the job?

Cheers
Click to expand...

Some games need the extra bandwidth,some don't. The best thing to do is google it & look at comparison charts. My advice would be,don't have any bottlenecks,that way your not worrying about it.
 
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