Graphics Card Upgrade... Will it work with my system?

[QuantumX]

Gentlemen,

I currently have the following:

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66GHz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366)
VTX3D ATI Radeon HD5870 1GB DDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DisplayPort

I was looking at a complete upgrade for CPU, motherboard and GFX card, but a lot of people are saying there is little be be gained upgrading the CPU..

So the question is can i just go to the latest GFX card? I'm looking at buying the

MSI HD 7970 OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card*

But i'm unsure if the motherboard will support it? i thin my card in PCIe 2.1 x16, and the new one is PCIe 3.0 x 16? and TBH i'm unsure what this means...

 

[QuantumX]

PCI-e 3 is backwards compatible so 7970 will work in that motherboard.

Will there be a performance hit?

Are there any disadvantages or issues?

 

[QuantumX]

Thanks for the very quick answers all... much appreciated..

I have order the Graphics card and a Saturday delivery, and not have to wait ;-(