# Can a PCI-E 2.0 card work on a regular PCI-E slot?



## CDdude55 (Oct 31, 2007)

Can it?


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## wazzledoozle (Oct 31, 2007)

yes


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## ex_reven (Oct 31, 2007)

Could someone post a few graphics cards that use the 2.0 spec?
Ive been falling behind with my hardware of late lol.


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## panchoman (Oct 31, 2007)

i think the r670 is a pci 2.0 card, correct me if im wrong.


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## Protius (Oct 31, 2007)

8800gt


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## francis511 (Oct 31, 2007)

Pci-e has been designed to be totally backwards compatible( I think)


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## ex_reven (Oct 31, 2007)

francis511 said:


> Pci-e has been designed to be totally backwards compatible( I think)



Yeah I think so to. Just like USB.


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## patton45 (Oct 31, 2007)

pci-e is totally back wards compatiable its bacically an increase  in the current 2.5ghz bandwidth of pci but the current selection of cards including the ultras and 2900xtx dont even saturate the entire bandwidth of pci-e 1   so dont feel you have to go out and get a new mobo just for your new 8800gt cause it wont sautrate your 1.0 bandwidth and i think the rv670 will be the first pci-e2.0 and dx10.1 compatiable card if it beats the 9800 which as of now its way ahead of it


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## GrapeApe (Oct 31, 2007)

CDdude55 said:


> Can it?



Yes, but there's reported early issues with some PCIe 1.0 spec setups, especially those that are PEG slots running at 4X etc, nut for a standard 16X slot the issue should be minimal as they are designed to be very bckwards compatbile by spec.



			
				ex_reven said:
			
		

> Could someone post a few graphics cards that use the 2.0 spec?



G92 and RV670 cards. 

Also the R600 and other RV6xx cards have been shown to run on PCIe 2.0 boards, and at the very least benefit fromt the additional power if not the improved signalling.

The R600 showed it before launch running on an early PCIe2.0 board with the need of only 1 of the two power connectors (the other 75W coming fromt the PCIe2.0 slot).


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## CDdude55 (Oct 31, 2007)

Thanks everyone.


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## Protius (Oct 31, 2007)

is there any benchmarks on the performance difference between regular and 2.0 yet?


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## patton45 (Oct 31, 2007)

no because there should be no current peformance difference until the 9800s are out which might actually use more of the avaliable bandwidth currently an 8800 uses only about 60-70% of the avaliable bandwidth so until the new gen cards with gpu that can use i doubt you will see any reviews on the performance differences

and i hear that pci-e is as future proof as you can get in the computer industry ie (agp will be the standard format for decades to come 3dfx said well that never really happened lol) can someone back that up but the rumor is there already working on a faster 3.0 and that its basically unlimited the future bandwiths


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## ex_reven (Oct 31, 2007)

patton45 said:


> no because there should be no current peformance difference until the 9800s are out which might actually use more of the avaliable bandwidth currently an 8800 uses only about 60-70% of the avaliable bandwidth so until the new gen cards with gpu that can use i doubt you will see any reviews on the performance differences



They say that like 40-60% of performance of two cards is lost in SLI though. Will PCIE help that? Or is it unrelated?


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## patton45 (Oct 31, 2007)

no those issuse are not hardware related its nvidias incompetence to release a good working drivers when the 7800 gx2 and 7950gx2 game out the two 7900gtx could beat the quad sli of the other two because of drivers .  nvidia has not perfected there teq so instead they just add more cards hence tripple sli  the pci-e 2 just increase the bandwith and in turn increaseing the watts its doesnt affect nvidias own chipset and driver incompetence.


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## kwchang007 (Oct 31, 2007)

ex_reven said:


> They say that like 40-60% of performance of two cards is lost in SLI though. Will PCIE help that? Or is it unrelated?



Maybe, but that's more due to the fact that running multiple cards creates a large overhead.  Because think about it, if you have one card rendering one frame and the other rendering the next, then you have to have something put them together send all to the same place and out put the images in different orders.  I don't think they're running out of bandwidth.....yet.


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## GrapeApe (Oct 31, 2007)

The main areas this should help near term are HyperMemory/TurboCache cards , those that use VirtualizedMemory (need WDDM support first though through DX10.1), and workstation cards which use large chunks of system and VRAM. 
For most gaming situations you shouldn't see massive improvement in the current round of top gaming card because they're not as restricted by bus speed because the swaps don't happen as much as the information spend in the VRAM and in the VPU itself.

You might see a jump in the GTS-320 in some situations where it runs out of VRAM, but even then the improvement will be limited. 

However you won't know until they're properly tested, while bandwidth doesn't seem to be an issue, improved latency could help alot of areas and we could se a small jump across the board, especially in min fps and texxture swaps. Heck, no one thought we used more than 8X bandwidth until they tested it and noticed that ther are a few occasions where it does make a difference. So since we couldn't test beyond the 8x->16X boost who knows, eh?


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## hugz (Nov 1, 2007)

PCIe 2.0 video card such as 8800GT or RV670XT (3870) is only compatible with motherboards with PCIe 1.1, 1.0a not supported.


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## KennyT772 (Nov 1, 2007)

hugz said:


> PCIe 2.0 video card such as 8800GT or RV670XT (3870) is only compatible with motherboards with PCIe 1.1, 1.0a not supported.



According to what? PCI-E v2 is fully backwards compatable. The two changes are signaling frequency 100mhz to 200mhz, and the specifications for the 8pin power plug. 

Please share with us the reason you claim they are not compatable with 1.0a.


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## hugz (Nov 1, 2007)

KennyT772 said:


> According to what? PCI-E v2 is fully backwards compatable. The two changes are signaling frequency 100mhz to 200mhz, and the specifications for the 8pin power plug.
> 
> Please share with us the reason you claim they are not compatable with 1.0a.



http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx?no=DE05A01F-3A3B-A859-177B-6A668A2D6982&SLanguage=en-us



> As PCI express 1.0/1.0a standard is not compatible with PCI express 2.0 specification, installing PCI express 2.0 cards onto PCIEX16_2 slot will result in system fail to detect expension cards installed on both PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX16_2 slot.


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## ghost101 (Nov 1, 2007)

Quite a few threads on XS mention that PCI-E 1.1 is required.


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## Frick (Nov 1, 2007)

How can one tell which PCIe one has? I assume my motherboard has PCIe 1.1, but it would be nice to know.


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## hugz (Nov 1, 2007)

ghost101 said:


> Quite a few threads on XS mention that PCI-E 1.1 is required.



yeah, thats another example.


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## hugz (Nov 1, 2007)

Frick said:


> How can one tell which PCIe one has? I assume my motherboard has PCIe 1.1, but it would be nice to know.



As far as I know all P35 chipsets got 1.1, 680i got it too

nForce4 PCIe 1.0a
MCP67 PCIe 1.1
MCP61 1.0a
RD580 PCIe 1.0a 
RS600 PCIe 1.0a 
RS690 PCIe 1.0a
P35/P31/Q33/Q35/G35/G31 1.1
P965 and X975 1.0a

yet another example:



			
				Fudzilla.com said:
			
		

> PCI Express 1.0/1.0a not compatible with 2.0 spec.
> With Asus latests P35 gaming boards, the Blitz Extreme and Blitz Formula, which are using an IDT chip to give you two x8 PCI Express slots instead of the normal x16 and x4 configuration of the P35 chipset, a problem has occured on the Asus FAQ.
> 
> It seems that the second slot is PCI Express 1.0/1.0a only and according to Asus, this older PCI Express standard isn't compatible with PCI Express 2.0.
> ...



Your motherboard has got the 1.1 pcie


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## KennyT772 (Nov 1, 2007)

Finnally, someone who does back up their posts with information. I am curious what motherboards have this issue, is it all older motherboards, or just ones with a older xfire/sli chipset. 

I want to know why they are not compatable.


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## Frick (Nov 1, 2007)

I wasn't concerned about my motherboard having PCIe 1.0a. 

What I am concerned about is this:

RD580 PCIe 1.0a
RS600 PCIe 1.0a
RS690 PCIe 1.0a
P965 PCIe 1.0a

That means a lot of people with kickass motherboards (say a good p965-board) cannot upgrade their graphic cards.. And that's a real shame IMO.


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## hugz (Nov 1, 2007)

take a look here http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1241374


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## Frick (Nov 1, 2007)

Ooohh.. Nice! Saved to my computer.


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## hugz (Nov 1, 2007)

P965 chipset is PCI-E 1.1a  that dutch website was wrong.



			
				Tatty One said:
			
		

> Look at page 9, paragraph 1.3.4 http://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/31305303.pdf


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## GREASEMONKEY (Nov 14, 2007)

Finding information on the compatability of PCI-E 2.0 cards with older motherboards seems to be elusive at best.I would like to put some self confirmed info on this subject out there.

I purchased an XFX 8800GT which is PCI-E 2.0,which i have installed on a Bio-Star T-force
939 board(pci-e version 1.0a compliant)and works great.

I also intstalled the 8800GT on a Abit AT-8 board(pci-e version1.0a),and it works fine in this mobo also,obviously not in crossfire though.I was told by a tech at AMD that the X3200 chipset on the AT-8 would support 2 PCI-E 2.0 cards in cross-fire.


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## Solaris17 (Nov 14, 2007)

hugz said:


> As far as I know all P35 chipsets got 1.1, 680i got it too
> 
> nForce4 PCIe 1.0a
> MCP67 PCIe 1.1
> ...




FUCK!!!! my GF got me an 8800GT for x-mas that i cant have yet and now it isnt compatable with me mobo?!


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## Wile E (Nov 14, 2007)

Solaris17 said:


> FUCK!!!! my GF got me an 8800GT for x-mas that i cant have yet and now it isnt compatable with me mobo?!


It's perfectly compatible. PCIe 2.0 is reverse compatible with 1


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## Solaris17 (Nov 14, 2007)

but its nf4 it says 1.0a which is incompatable to my knowledge least thats what everyone said on like the first 2 pages


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## Wile E (Nov 14, 2007)

Solaris17 said:


> but its nf4 it says 1.0a which is incompatable to my knowledge least thats what everyone said on like the first 2 pages


Check the post above your first one. It should be fine.


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## Solaris17 (Nov 14, 2007)

wew   yay least i dont have to try and buy a new mobo without her noticing its like ever sionce i moved in she knows were every dollar of mine is spent


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## Wile E (Nov 14, 2007)

Solaris17 said:


> wew   yay least i dont have to try and buy a new mobo without her noticing its like ever sionce i moved in she knows were every dollar of mine is spent


lol. That's the breaks in this type of relationship. I usually have to make unsavory promises to get goodies. lol


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## W1zzard (Nov 14, 2007)

all pcie 2.0 cards will work fine on any pci-e motherboards.
any pcie 1.x cards will work fine on any pci-e 2.0 motherboard

the main benefit of pci-e 2.0 is that the transfer bandwidth has been increased. however, many gpu board designs are not even designed to handle transfer speeds of 4 GB/s, most give you 1-2 GB/s in reality.

does it make any difference in game FPS ? I dont think so. For a quick test set your port speed to PCI-E 8x vs. x16. The difference you will now see is the _maximum_ incerase you will be able to get going from PCI-E 1.0 x16 -> PCI-E 2.0 x16 which is just like x32 in terms of bandwidth


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## wiak (Nov 14, 2007)

+1
master


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