Is the O/C website wrong about the 7850?

[OracIe]

Or am I missing something?

I was considering upgrading my GFX to a 7970 (From my 7850) because the OC website states that my card is bus PCI-E 2.1 whereas the 7970 is bus PCI-E 3.0.

Started looking around and according to the ATI/AMD website - my 7850 is in fact PCI-E 3.0.

Installed and loaded GPU-Z and It's stating its a 3.0 card running at 3.0.

So who's wrong?

 

[Jono8]

What does it matter? As long as you have PCI Express 2.0 slot they will all be compatible anyway. With the current crop of cards i don't think there is much difference in speed between running them in a 2.0 or 3.0 slot.

 

[OracIe]

Yeah, I know but it's more psychological than anything!!

 

[oldestgregg]

Its beneficial if you were running crossfire 7950s but only one wouldnt matter.

 

[David Bisset]

GPU-Z says my 7850 is 3.0 and running at 3.0 despite my mobo only supporting 2.0. Oops! So I'd not take what GPU-Z says as gospel. That said, if the ATI/AMD website says its 3.0 then I'd assume that is most likely supported.

As it makes no difference to performance I'd have to echo the 'who cares' sentiment.

 

[PaulyD]

It really doesn't make much difference at all. Check this out here

 

[Confused Stu]

The description says it's a 7850 built using the 7870 board, both of which are PCI-E 3.0 cards. The reviews of the card say PCI-E 3.0, and even the box in the photo behind the card says PCI-E 3.0 in the bottom left. I'd say the description is the bit where the mistake/typo's occured.

I do agree with the others that the performance difference between PCI-E 2 and 3 is negligible for 99% of systems for 99% of uses, but you've used it as an excuse to upgrade to a 7970 - nicely done! I've actually used more tenuous excuses to justify upgrades to myself before (well, if I need to reinstall Windows anyway, I may as well change motherboard while I'm at it, and there's no point staying on an old socket, so I'll also need a new CPU and DDR3....)

Enjoy the 7970.

EDIT - just re-read the OP and noticed you're only considering buying a 7970 to replace it. Still, just in case you do decide to get it I'll let my post stand.

 

[Jono8]

It really doesn't make much difference at all. Check this out here

Looks like its worth doing if you only play Max Payne 3

The difference really is very small. Other than Max Payne it seems its either no difference or a few percent at most.

 

[Kaapstad]

Here is some I have done

4 Titans @stock x16/x8/x8/x8

PCI-E 3.0

Spoiler

PCI-E 2.0

Spoiler

PCI-E 1.0

Spoiler

Not much difference using PCI-E 2.0 or 3.0 but a noticeable drop using PCI-E 1.0

 

[OracIe]

Interesting!

 

[MeMeMeMe]

I'm not sure I'd call a 6fps drop off 186 noticeable! I'm surprised dropping to PCI-e 1 makes so little impact.

How did you test PCI-E 1? Your CPU is reported as i7-3930k; I'm sure there are no PCIe-1 mboards that support it. Maybe the method you used to simulate PCI-e 1 wasn't effective?

 

[Kaapstad]

I'm not sure I'd call a 6fps drop off 186 noticeable! I'm surprised dropping to PCI-e 1 makes so little impact.

How did you test PCI-E 1? Your CPU is reported as i7-3930k; I'm sure there are no PCIe-1 mboards that support it. Maybe the method you used to simulate PCI-e 1 wasn't effective?

On a Rampage IV Extreme mobo you can select PCI-E 1, 2 or 3 in the bios.

 

[MeMeMeMe]

What a cool feature! Why does it exist?

 

[OptimaLnrg]

What a cool feature! Why does it exist?

The highest end rog mobos have a complete ton of options to turn gizmos up or down. The vast majority of people will never use them.

For this they could cite compatibility, or maybe running at pcie 1.0 puts less strain on the cpu which could help when it's clocked to a bajillion gigahertz on ln2 by someone, Idk.

 

[OracIe]

What a cool feature! Why does it exist?

The Gigabyte Z87X-OC has this functionality too.