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PCI Express 3.0

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Nightbird

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 10, 2010
Messages
1,067
With the release of the final PCI Express 3.0 specifications near, I'm curious as to any effect this should have on any purchasing decisions. In the video card department, does this mean that the next generation of video cards (HD6000 series for ATI, GTX500*?* series for Nvidia) will be PCI-e 3.0? If they will be, does anyone think they will work with older PCI-e 2.1 motherboards?(I have my doubts since there is a data encoding change) Moreover, will there be visibly greater performance? This jump from 2.1 to 3.0 is an improvement from 500MB/s to 1GB/s per lane, but do even the most powerful video cards come anywhere close to using the x16 lanes they're currently allotted? Or maybe just in extreme SLI and Crossfire setups?

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/1.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_480_PCI-Express_Scaling/1.html

I've read around here and there, and the conclusion I've drawn is that while the HD5870 and GTX480 can run fine at 500MB/s x8 lanes with a 2% loss in performance from the halving of bandwidth, this means that dual GPU 5970 and upcoming dual Fermi card could gain 2% from bandwidth alone with 3.0. Considering that current cards running at x4 (25% of the max bandwidth) can deliver 93% of x16 performance, I feel a bit lukewarm about my future buying plans.

This is why I'd like to hear what the experts in the community have to say, both about performance and about compatibility. A lot of motherboards could be on sale Q4 of this year, but the next iteration of video cards will be out by Q1, 2011. Technology becomes obsolete quickly in this industry, but is this one time when waiting half a year means getting a MB that isn't obsolete in half a year? Thanks ahead of time.

(Ok, maybe this affects AMD users more than Intel users, since every Intel CPU upgrade comes with a MB upgrade anyways)
 
The final specification is due in the second quarter of 2010 and will be backwards compatible with existing PCIe implementations.
Click to expand...
- From Wikipedia on PCI Express

Anyway, I suspect the performance increase will only make a difference( with the current cards) in high-end SLI/CF setups, as you say. However, with the next generations from ATI and Nvidia it might actually make a difference with single-GPU cards as well. While I doubt we're talking more than single-digit percents, I might have considered waiting if I was looking to upgrade at this time( which I'm not ). Backward compatibility isn't a problem, but personally I just like knowing I have 'the latest', and it's hard to say beforehand just how much the upcoming video cards can benefit from this transition.
 
It should have very little influence on your purchasing.

All versions of PCI-E are fully backwards and forwards compatible with each other. A PCI-E 1.x card works fine in a 2.x slot and will in a 3.x slot (when they eventually become available), and a 3.x video card (when they eventually become available) will work fine in 2.x and 1.x slots. The only card that ever had PCI-E compatibility problems was the first run of the 8800GT with a few 1.0a motherboards; that's not going to happen again.

In terms of performance, they over-engineered the hell out of PCI-E 1.0, to the point that only now are they making cards that exceed its bandwidth, and just barely - these are the multi-GPU cards such as the 5970. Single GPU cards still don't flood 1.x bandwidth. Nothing is even close to flooding 2.x bandwidth and it's a valid question whether that will ever happen.

Short answer: don't worry about PCI-E versions.
 
evilsofa said:
It should have very little influence on your purchasing.

All versions of PCI-E are fully backwards and forwards compatible with each other. A PCI-E 1.x card works fine in a 2.x slot and will in a 3.x slot (when they eventually become available), and a 3.x video card (when they eventually become available) will work fine in 2.x and 1.x slots. The only card that ever had PCI-E compatibility problems was the first run of the 8800GT with a few 1.0a motherboards; that's not going to happen again.

In terms of performance, they over-engineered the hell out of PCI-E 1.0, to the point that only now are they making cards that exceed its bandwidth, and just barely - these are the multi-GPU cards such as the 5970. Single GPU cards still don't flood 1.x bandwidth. Nothing is even close to flooding 2.x bandwidth and it's a valid question whether that will ever happen.

Short answer: don't worry about PCI-E versions.
Click to expand...

This
 
Thanks for the answers. Guess I'm back to my dilemma of whether to skip this current generation of cards :)
 
Nightbird said:
Thanks for the answers. Guess I'm back to my dilemma of whether to skip this current generation of cards :)
Click to expand...

I've seen great deals all over the web for hd5800's and GTX400's the past few weeks. Look for a good deal and just bite. I think dell had 20% off and somebody snagged a gtx480 for like $380.

If you're not running 30" screen or eyefinity any of those cards will do you well.
 
2010.6.17
Will we need 400W ps avail just for the gpu, meaning +600W for dual core gpu... or a 1KW ps for next year builds?

Isn't W8 due next year, and hopefully +300GB ssd in the $200-300 instead of today's $600?

And as i see it LED are supposed to replace LCD monitors.
Going to be a shame to finally get a home supercomputer by next year and the world ends Dec 2012!
 
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