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pcie 3.0 vs 2.0

A

atzero86

n00b
Joined
Oct 30, 2010
Messages
30
Looking to do an upgrade early feb. Going from a Q9550/ep45ud3l/8gb1066 to a i72600k/8gb 1600. I'm looking for a board...doesnt look like any of the boards support the ram speed i want(they support it oc) I plan on ocing...obviously. How important is pci 3.0?(i will soon be getting a new gpu) currently have a 5850oced.

Edit: i dont want an asus board.
 
Cant see how 3.0 will be any real benefit when our current cards cant saturate 2.0. Im all for getting the latest and greatest stuff for future proofing but in this case, I would pass on a 3.0 board if I could find a better one that only had 2.0 and not think too much about it.

There may be some different features that come with it but Im not aware of any but Im not that up on the latest tech news.
 
thats my thought...future proof the case..I can see my current card even gaining a little from 3.0..what if it is saturating the 2.0?
 
I think it is really worth it, its surely not going to be a technology that will die out.. Lets be real here

sig.jpg
 
pci 3.0 Is nice to have but certainly not necessary right now in terms of GPU's. Even the craziest quad Xfire/SLI will not gain any benefit from PCIe 3.0, so its just something nice to have, like an extra SATAIII port that you are not using.. Nice to have just in case, but otherwise not doing very much.

Those PCIe 3.0 slots are mostly used with high-end RAID cards that can hook up like 12 ssd's together and stuff. Those will make full use of the extra bandwith. Otherwise, no, you will not see any difference in performance, but since PCIe 3.0 are relatively cheap right now anyways (and some look really awesome as opposed to their non PCIe 3 counterparts), the question is more "why not?"
 
The new 7970's support pci 3.0 and tomshardware ran some tests showing that on a pci 3.0 mb there is a slight increase in performance. Considering you had your system for 2-3 years before upgrading, I'd get a pci 3.0 board, either gigabyte or asrock since you're anti asus. Either a z68 board or wait for the new 77 boards
 
People always get this issue wrong, it is not simply black and white. PCI-E 3.0 for a SINGLE GPU and display will not offer any benefit in practicality, but when you start adding multiple GPU's, multiple screens and knocking the slots down to 8x from 16x with the latest GPU's there will be a decent benefit.

Remember, no MB chip set can do more than dual 16x native so the third and fourth GPU's will be in a 8x slot minimum. This will be very evident when IB hit's the stores with only 16x PCI-E 3.0 bandwidth and something like dual 7990's. Dual 7990's in 8x slots (PCI-E 3.0) running Eyefinity will have a huge benefit I'd wager over 8x PCI-E 2.0. So in short, yes there will be a PCI-E 3.0 benefit for GPU's in certain circumstances.
 
CrazyCuz2k said:
The new 7970's support pci 3.0 and tomshardware ran some tests showing that on a pci 3.0 mb there is a slight increase in performance. Considering you had your system for 2-3 years before upgrading, I'd get a pci 3.0 board, either gigabyte or asrock since you're anti asus. Either a z68 board or wait for the new 77 boards
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If I remember correctly, the only thing that showed a benefit was video encoding using the GPU - the game testing was virtually identical.

Vega said:
People always get this issue wrong, it is not simply black and white. PCI-E 3.0 for a SINGLE GPU and display will not offer any benefit in practicality, but when you start adding multiple GPU's, multiple screens and knocking the slots down to 8x from 16x with the latest GPU's there will be a decent benefit.

Remember, no MB chip set can do more than dual 16x native so the third and fourth GPU's will be in a 8x slot minimum. This will be very evident when IB hit's the stores with only 16x PCI-E 3.0 bandwidth and something like dual 7990's. Dual 7990's in 8x slots (PCI-E 3.0) running Eyefinity will have a huge benefit I'd wager over 8x PCI-E 2.0. So in short, yes there will be a PCI-E 3.0 benefit for GPU's in certain circumstances.
Click to expand...

Normally the third and fourth slots are off something like the NF200, so not really directly comparable to direct CPU PCIe lanes. You're right though about the impact when going to multiple cards - PCIe 3.0 x8 might be beneficial for multiple 7970s or Kepler cards (as opposed to 2.0 x8), but we'll have to wait and see. In any case though, it isn't going to be a significant difference (a few percent at most).

Also, be sure that the board is true PCIe 3.0 - I've seen some rumors that the Z68 "Gen 3" boards might only really run at half-speed 3.0 (so same as 2.0) just like the P55 motherboards ran half-speed 2.0.

Here's something about it - the type of switches is the key:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-msi-pcie-3.0-gen3-third-gen,13485.html
 
Vega said:
People always get this issue wrong, it is not simply black and white. PCI-E 3.0 for a SINGLE GPU and display will not offer any benefit in practicality, but when you start adding multiple GPU's, multiple screens and knocking the slots down to 8x from 16x with the latest GPU's there will be a decent benefit.

Remember, no MB chip set can do more than dual 16x native so the third and fourth GPU's will be in a 8x slot minimum. This will be very evident when IB hit's the stores with only 16x PCI-E 3.0 bandwidth and something like dual 7990's. Dual 7990's in 8x slots (PCI-E 3.0) running Eyefinity will have a huge benefit I'd wager over 8x PCI-E 2.0. So in short, yes there will be a PCI-E 3.0 benefit for GPU's in certain circumstances.
Click to expand...
Actually the gains will be negligible (a few percent at most; not resolution/image quality toggles). The most recent test results I've seen are from TechPowerUp, and confirm the results of several older Toms Hardware tests. x16 vs x8 is rounding error.
 
DanNeely said:
Actually the gains will be negligible (a few percent at most; not resolution/image quality toggles). The most recent test results I've seen are from TechPowerUp, and confirm the results of several older Toms Hardware tests. x16 vs x8 is rounding error.
Click to expand...

Wow, you must not have read a single thing I said. PCI-Express testing on a 5870 three years ago on a single display does not equal something like two 7990's in 8x PCI-E 2.0 versus 3.0 slots running multiple monitors in Eyefinity.

Listen carefully, they are WORLDS APART and that test has zero validity on a multi-GPU/Multi-screen setup with the latest GPUs.
 
The penalties TPU measured are comparable to what Toms Hardware saw a half dozenish years ago with 8800's and PCIe 1.0; GPU PCIe bandwidth needs scale much slower than raw performance. IIRC HardOCP testing with 16/4 SLI/xFire results were the same (doesn't matter); but searching for old articles here is a PITA.
 
DanNeely said:
The penalties TPU measured are comparable to what Toms Hardware saw a half dozenish years ago with 8800's and PCIe 1.0; GPU PCIe bandwidth needs scale much slower than raw performance. IIRC HardOCP testing with 16/4 SLI/xFire results were the same (doesn't matter); but searching for old articles here is a PITA.
Click to expand...

really, they are a pain in the ass to find? took me all of 20 seconds to find them and no i don't have them bookmarked either.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/08/25/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x4x4/

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/08/16/sli_cfx_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x16x8/
 
CrazyCuz2k said:
The new 7970's support pci 3.0 and tomshardware ran some tests showing that on a pci 3.0 mb there is a slight increase in performance. Considering you had your system for 2-3 years before upgrading, I'd get a pci 3.0 board, either gigabyte or asrock since you're anti asus. Either a z68 board or wait for the new 77 boards
Click to expand...

Anti Asus and you're advocating that he get an Asrock? Lol, you know that Asrock is owned by Asus, right?
 
atzero86 said:
new problem, I want a gigabyte board and none of them offer 2x16xpcie 2.0
Click to expand...

No SB motherboard offers true x16x16, as the CPU only supports 16 total lanes for graphic cards. You'll need a motherboard with a NF200 to get x16x16.
 
Melon said:
Anti Asus and you're advocating that he get an Asrock? Lol, you know that Asrock is owned by Asus, right?
Click to expand...

Wrong!!! not anymore, asrock used to be a spun off of asus to compete with ecs and foxconn until 2007, now they're owned by Pegatron.
 
Go with an asrock extreme 4 gen 3 or extreme7 gen 3 which has the nf200 allowing you to run two slot at x16 and 3 way sli or trifire. I bought the extreme4 and im very satisfied so far.
 
atzero86 said:
doesnt look like any of the boards support the ram speed i want(they support it oc) I plan on ocing...obviously.
Click to expand...

Are you planning on going with an Intel/Sandy Bridge build, if so RAM speed has very little to do with over clocking and RAM speed isn't important in performance either, since all you really need is DDR3 1333 or 1600, whichever is the cheapest at the time.


santanac said:
Go with an asrock extreme 4 gen 3 or extreme7 gen 3 which has the nf200 allowing you to run two slot at x16 and 3 way sli or trifire. I bought the extreme4 and im very satisfied so far.
Click to expand...


Not that great of advice considering 1. The OP doesn't even want an ASUS board and ASUS basically makes ASRock. 2. ASRock motherboards have a 1 - 2 year warranty, while other similar performing/priced boards have 3+ year warranties.
 
I have heard that there have been tests done to see if the benefit from the NF200 2 x16 is actually a huge jump from 2 x8 and if I remember correctly it wasn't and in some areas, th NF200 had a delay.
 
If you are running 7970s in Tri-Fire, then 3.0 is a huge boost. The 7970s can saturate the 3.0 bus just through pure compute functions. The triple scaling it offers is second to none. Read Anandtech's full in-depth review of the 7970 Tahiti chipset, it's mind blowing.

Plus being future proof is nice. No idea what Kepler will offer. Do you need 3.0 right now? No. Is it nice to have if you are an every-few-year upgrader? Yeah.
 
Skillz said:
Not that great of advice considering 1. The OP doesn't even want an ASUS board and ASUS basically makes ASRock. 2. ASRock motherboards have a 1 - 2 year warranty, while other similar performing/priced boards have 3+ year warranties.
Click to expand...

1. Read post 19
2. In my case i upgraded from x58 recently to avoid losing too much money on that hardware, didnt care for their warranty since these gen3 motherboards doesnt even have true pcie 3.0 and i needed something for the meanwhile and cheap, now when true ivy bridge motherboards such as h77, z77 or z75 thats a different story.
 
Skillz said:
Are you planning on going with an Intel/Sandy Bridge build, if so RAM speed has very little to do with over clocking and RAM speed isn't important in performance either, since all you really need is DDR3 1333 or 1600, whichever is the cheapest at the time.
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I'll end up going 2600k and getting it as high as possible
thinking corsair vengeance or something similar. 2x4gb@1600 i figure
Board suggestions? I've mentioned I dont care for asrock/asus..Would prefer a gigabyte board
 
I'm not really sure why this is even in question... I mean future-proofing as much as one can is a GOOD thing, right? It's not like the PCIE3.0 boards are like $300 larger investment over the 2.0 ones...
 
xSystemFailurex said:
I'm not really sure why this is even in question... I mean future-proofing as much as one can is a GOOD thing, right? It's not like the PCIE3.0 boards are like $300 larger investment over the 2.0 ones...
Click to expand...

Sure, but in terms of PC gaming, PCI-E 2.0 is already so thoroughly future-proofed that I remain skeptical that any single-GPU card will ever exceed its bandwidth before GPUs get merged back onto the CPU for good. Even now they are barely exceeding PCI-E 1.0!
 
evilsofa said:
Sure, but in terms of PC gaming, PCI-E 2.0 is already so thoroughly future-proofed that I remain skeptical that any single-GPU card will ever exceed its bandwidth before GPUs get merged back onto the CPU for good. Even now they are barely exceeding PCI-E 1.0!
Click to expand...

True as this may be, there is still a slight speed advantage (though only in compute if I recall correctly...) to 3.0 over 2.0. Just becuase a bus isn't saturated doesn't mean the newer standard won't be a touch faster. There's a chart on Anandtech or somewhere showing the slight speed edge of 3.0. Would link it if I could find it.
 
So far it does not matter.

Look if it is going to be a total pain to 3.0 in a board why don't you just buy a typical $100 board and then accept that IF you ever do come accross the need for 3.0 you will just need to drop another $100 at that time to get a new board? I mean it all depends on the costs but sometimes people will drop over $200 to try to get a board with all the features they might ever need instead of just buying a good value board for $100 now. Most of the time they never do need to upgrade but in the rare instance they do they can sell the old one and buy a new one for a similar price.
 
OK so here's the thing in 90+% of usage scenarios you won't see any real world benifit from PCI-E 3.0 (and in fact sandy bridge boars at best will give you 3.0 x 8 if you are using more than one card which is the same as 2.0 x16 which you could get on a 1366 mobo) but theres is no downside to getting a 3.0 Board and they don't really cost anymore so yeah get the 3.0 no reason not to.

Now if we were talking about upgrading from an existsing z68 2.0 board or somthing like that I would tell you to save your money but your not so getting a 3.0 board is a no brainer.
 
rudy said:
So far it does not matter.

Look if it is going to be a total pain to 3.0 in a board why don't you just buy a typical $100 board and then accept that IF you ever do come accross the need for 3.0 you will just need to drop another $100 at that time to get a new board? I mean it all depends on the costs but sometimes people will drop over $200 to try to get a board with all the features they might ever need instead of just buying a good value board for $100 now. Most of the time they never do need to upgrade but in the rare instance they do they can sell the old one and buy a new one for a similar price.
Click to expand...

So having to buy and install a new 3.0 mobo 6 months after you get the first one is less of a PITA? How? I'm the kind of person who gets at least 3 years use out of an entire build. The price diff is not $100, and it's more expensive in the long run to just keep upgrading components every 6 months, $100 at a time.
 
I am just purposing another way of looking at it. What I find happens most often is people do not upgrade as much as they thought. If getting USB 3.0, PCIE 3.0 and all the other future proofing is a small enough sum good. If it turns out to be a sacrifice on other parts or a large increase in price then not worth it.
 
End of wild speculation, I have the numbers.

The results of my PCI Express 2.0 versus 3.0 on my 4-way SLI GTX 680 FW900 Surround setup are in. The results are so incredible I had to start the tests over from scratch and run them multiple times for confirmation! :eek:

Test setup:

3960X @ 5.0 GHz (temp slow speed)
Asus Rampage IV Extreme with PCI-E slots running 16x/8x/8x/8x
(4) EVGA GTX 680's running 1191MHz core, 3402 MHz Memory
nVidia Driver 301.10 with PCI-E 3.0 registry adjustment turned on and off for each applicable tes
GPU-Z 0.6.0

SANY0003-12.jpg



After PCI-E settings changed, confirmed with GPU-Z:

PCI-E20.gif


PCI-E30.gif



All settings in nVidia control panel, in-game and in benchmark, EVGA precision are all UNTOUCHED between benchmark runs. The only setting adjusted is the PCI-E 2.0 to 3.0 and back and forth for confirmation (Reboots obviously for registry edit).


PCI-ETests.jpg



I kid you not, that is how much PCI-E 2.0 running at 16x/8x/8x/8x versus PCI-E 3.0 bottlenecks BF3 and Heaven 3.0 at these resolutions. I attribute this to the massive bandwidth being transferred over the PCI-E bus. We are talking 4-way SLI at up to 10-megapixels in alternate frame rendering. Entire frames at high FPS are being swapped and PCI-E 2.0 falls on it's face.

The interesting part was that while running PCI-E 2.0, the GPU utilization dropped way down as would be typically seen if you are "CPU" limited. In this instance I am not CPU limited, nor GPU limited. We are really at a point now that you can be PCI-E limited unless you go PCI-E 3.0 8x (16x PCI-E 2.0) or faster on all GPU's in the system. GPU utilization dropped down into the ~50% range due to PCI-E 2.0 choking them to death. As soon as I enabled PCI-E 3.0, the GPU utilization skyrocketed to 95+% on all cores. I was going to run more benchmarks and games but the results are such blow-outs it seems pretty pointless to do any more. It may interest some of those out there running these new PCI-E 3.0 GPU's in which they think they are CPU limited (below 95% GPU utilization) yet might have PCI-E bandwidth issues.

Down to the nitty gritty; if you run a single GPU, yes; a single 16x speed PCI-E 2.0 slot will be fine. When you start to run multiple GPU's and/or run these new cards at 8x speed, especially in Surround/Eyefinity, make sure to get PCI-E 3.0. ;)

Hitting VRAM limit and PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0 battle video tests. Make sure to watch in 480P instead of lower (I forgot to set the camera back to 720P and I don't feel like recording everything all over again lol). Sorry about the video quality but it is still view-able.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0-x...DvjVQa1PpcFOpwHlB70YlOHjBhzZ8mtcWAKgkFdz3LBo=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkZz...DvjVQa1PpcFOpwHlB70YlOALsTk3pZxTxt4tbGt5H9Yk=
 
Now that you know what PCI-E choking looks like, do you see evidence that two cards in SLI get choked with PCI-E 2.0? That's the situation that almost all SLI users want to know about.

Does raising BCLK on the motherboard have an impact in these situations?
 
Obviously it would help for triple + setups. I don't think the benefit would be very large for dual setups though.

I've benchmarked my single GTX680 running at x8 and x16 2.0 speeds and when running at x8 I get around a 5-6% loss. So I figure 10-12% total if running dual cards.
 
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