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When will graphics cards use pci e 3.0?

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17 Feb 2011
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589
I was looking at buying a motherboard for a 2500k and was debating whether to get one with pci e 3.0 or without, with the price difference being roughly £30. The thing I'm wondering is when will we see graphics cards that make use of it?

Also, assuming I bought the motherboard without pci e 3 and then I bought a graphics card that was pci e 3.0, how would it affect it's performance?
 
Its not gonna be a game changer, systems are only restricted by PCI bandwidth in very extreme circumstances.

x16 and x8 x8 work fine.
 
if you're gonna keep the motherboard for a high number of years, and going to keep upgrading it with high end gpus, then get pci-e 3, if not, and you're gonna get midrage gpus, they shoudlnt be bottlenecked by the pci-e 2 interface and you'll be fine.

Look at the performance of the high end gpu's today. they are using pci-e 2, so anything around that performance or less will be fine for now.
 
Remember that even if you get a motherboard with PCI-E 3.0 it will only operate as PCI-E 2.0 until you drop an Ivy Bridge processor in.

Sandy Bridge doesn't support PCI-E 3.0.
 
£30 seems very little to me for additional future proofing.
It might not even be needed, but I like the reassurance that it is there.
 
performance for pci-e 3 is "needed" for crossfire multichannel ie 6990x2 cards and in eyefinity resolutions.
other than that, it wont affect you or the average gamer/user.
 
£30 seems very little to me for additional future proofing.
It might not even be needed, but I like the reassurance that it is there.

All Gigabyte SB boards are getting a free bios update to enable PCI-E 3.0, so it doesnt require any extra cost.
 
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