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600 series gpu on pci-e 2.0?

Associate
Joined
11 Sep 2011
Posts
949
guys just a quick question. can you use a gtx 600 series on a mobo that has pci-e 2.0? i ask as the 600 series are 3.0 but my friend is after a new card but his mobo only supports 2.0. might be a daft question i know but only just thought about it.
 
The PCI-E 3.0 technology has not been used to its full potential yet, at the moment it is more or less just allowing for GPU manufacturers to make better GPU's in the future, with more bandwidth to work with. With 600 series Nvidia GPU's or 7000 series AMD GPU's, whether they run on PCI-E 2.0 or 3.0 won't affect the performance too much, it might take a slight performance hit on higher end GPU's. but on the lower end ones, it may make no difference at all. Obviously if you SLI/CF the performance hit will increase proportionally, but you would still find it hard to tell the difference.

PCI-E 3.0 GPU's are backwards compatible with PCI-E 2.0 and PCI-E 1.0 just as PCI-E 2.0 GPU's are backwards compatible with PCI-E 1.0.
 
For a single monitor the difference between PCI-E 2.0 and 3.0 for me is less than 1%.

If you run multi gpus and multi monitors at high resolutions it can make a difference.
 
I've heard some 600 cards are bugged in PCI-E 3.0 mode anyway. I'm running my GTX670 in forced PCI-E 2.0 mode to avoid any issues.

There is a problem with GTX 670/80s and X79 boards with PCI-E 3.0 but there is a hack to get around that so they can use PCI-E 3.0.
 
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