Gen 2 PCI-E or not?

vipergrm · 29 Aug 2008 at 15:57

All,

I am thinking of purchasing an ATI HD 4870 X2 graphics card, but I don't know if it's worth me buying the card as the board I just ordered from OcUK is only Gen 1 PCI_E (Abit IP35 Pro). Would I be wasting my money or should I return the bundle and get a Gen 2 capable motherboard? Should I go for the ATI HD 3870 X2 instead? Is there much of a perforance difference between the two? Appreciate your help. Thanks!

Imy · 29 Aug 2008 at 16:02

I didn't think any card could max out the bandwidth of a PCI-E v1 x16 lane slot yet or has that changed now?

CraigN · 29 Aug 2008 at 16:06

The 4870X2 will still be a lot faster maybe a 1 or 2 % difference between PCIe 1 16x and 2 16x

vipergrm · 29 Aug 2008 at 17:01

Thanks guys. Looks like I'll be getting one then!

Nick1881 · 29 Aug 2008 at 17:04

I gained roughly 700 points in 3dMark06 going from Abit IP35 Pro to Asus Maximus with PCIe 2.0.

AbsenceJam · 29 Aug 2008 at 17:25

Imy said:
I didn't think any card could max out the bandwidth of a PCI-E v1 x16 lane slot yet or has that changed now?

This is still the case afaik but there are still tiny performance gains, better chipsets more than PCIe generation I reckon.

decto · 30 Aug 2008 at 13:59

I read an article a while ago testing the impact of PCI-E 1.0 at x1, x4, x8 and x16.

They used a 8800GTS 320/640 and showed that x8 (2 GB/sec) resulted in reduced performance with a single card.

The 4870 a lot faster than a GTS, with a 4870 X2 you've a lot of data to shift from memory to both cards through the single slot. I'd expect that x16 (4GB/sec) could soon become a limiting factor so x16 v2 (8GB/sec) has to be the only option.

I'd certainly go for the PCI-E 2 option

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