I am wondering if you have a motherboard that has PCIe 2.0 what would be the reasons for installing a graphics card with 3.0? I realize they are backwards compatible but what benefit would one get using a 3.0 card in a 2.0 motherboard? I also see some cards listed as 2.1 and could you please explain where that would fit in for a build? Last but not least, why does an AMD configuration board not offer 3.0?
Theres really no differance from 2.0-3.0 other than higher bandwith so unless you absolutley need all the performance out of your card possible its not a big deal like in my case I have a 2600k thats sandy bridge so no pcie 3.0 but I run my gtx 670 (pcie 3.0) fine just a 3-4 fps differance in games but for 3d rendering that uses the gpu its a lot more noticeable.
I think amd is waiting fot pcie 4.0....
Amd does have 3.0 on chips like the 8350 but only some high end am3+ mobo's have 3.0 regardless its not a huge differance.
As far as I know, none of current AMD CPUs have 3.0 support
The only benefit I see in using a 3.0 card in a 2.0 slot is to save some money. CPUs and mobos that don't support 3.0 are usually cheaper than those that do. Other than that, I don't see anything else.
As far as I know, cards that are available this days barely use the full potential of 2.0. I believe, though, that 3.0 has other uses. IMO, SATA cards can fully saturate the bandwidth of PCI-E 3.0.
Thanks to all. I have a i5 2500k Sandy Bridge in a Gigabyte board that has PCIe 2.0 and I am using a Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1GB 2.0 card. I was not sure if I should upgrade the card with a 2GB GPU or not because I did not know if the cost to benefit ratio would be worth it.