I am thinking about upgrading my PC and was wondering whether PCI Express 3.0 x16 would work in a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot on a motherboard. I want the EVGA GTX 680 and the ASRock 970E3/U3S3. I have tried looking this up but I could not find any forum answers on the topic. Please help me!
It will work. there will be no performance loss also. (Maybe 3% at the highest).
Although the newer gen Graphic cards (Radeon HD 8xxx and GTX 7xx) Will use the PCI 3.0 bandwidth, so if you're planning to upgrade in the future, maybe intel is an option. The new Chipsets that are coming out (1090FX i beleive) will support PCI 3.0 though, if you would want to buy that later on.
But yes, PCI 3.0 will work in 2.0 slots without any performance loss in this generation of graphic cards (up to GTX 690 and HD 7970).
Yes, they are both interchangable. The card shall just operate at PCI-e 2.0 speeds. (which doesn't actually affect them)
- zanginator
pfff.... they won't use it unless your in a quad gpu setup. the only thing that is going to saturate pcie 3.0 is a pcie ssd.
>implying graphics cards take up a full 8x channel....