SB to IB upgrade for PCI-E 3 worth it?

L

LordCalin

Gawd
Joined
Oct 5, 2009
Messages
901
So for once.. being cheap paid off, and going for the P8P67 instead of P8P67 Pro means my board will do PCI-E 3 with an IB cpu... but is it worth it? running 2500k / 7870 right now so the only part i'm missing to jump from PCIE 2 to 3 is the CPU.
 
no. by the time its meaningful there will be a pcie 4 or 5. It's really just pissing money away.
 
No. IB is not a good upgrade for almost all SB owners. PCI-E 3 offers very little if any benefit currently for most gamers. Maybe if you had tripple crossfire and a 7970 or triple GTX 680, then it would be worth considering. But then SB-E might be better anyway.
 
IB does suffer a bit on clocking up vs SB so the slight gain in IPC is not worth it. PCI-E 3.0 simply shows no real life benefit with one real world and only one not real world exception(at this point), 1-2 synthetic tests which are still only 2-3% faster, and with SSD based on pci-e that are bar none more $ then most anyone is willing to spend save enterprise folks(easily thousands of dollars for the drives that are capable of chewing gb of info/sec hence "needing" the sped pcie 3.0 can give)

So the short answer, very very few current gen or even the next 1-2gen of cards can truly saturate pci-e 2.0 lets alone doubling the bandwidth available, so its a moot point as of yet in all that I have read. The "bottlenecks" can from the cpu/gpu speeds, memory speeds/capacity not meeting up with the gpu crunching power, not a data limitation cause the bus is being bn.
 
Even if you had the itch to upgrade something, you'd be better off buying a Z77 board over IB.
 
yeah reading a lot of that now.... I fell for the hype when I was asking earlier... The boasts the new gen cards were PCI-E 3.0!.... The new boards coming into stock all covered with PCI-E 3.0 COMPATABLE stickers.. hadn't really looked into it, but now I see even with a 7970 the improvement is negligible. Thanks for the answers
 
To me - a noticeable difference would be like running BF3 with very nice playable framerates on High Graphics on PCI-e 2.0 and running on Ultra Graphics on PCI-E 3.0. And where the PCI-e 2.0 setup would not keep up running Ultra Graphics.
 
Only if you are an Intel fan boy.

My big gripe about the new IB is the screwed up IHS design that uses TIM instead of fluxless solder.
 
One game hardly makes the point that pci-e 3.0 is worth it.

If the bandwidth on the cards interface was needed, AMD, Nvidia, Intel, Via and other most def would have updated to pci-e 3.0 or beyond years ago. I do not know the match behind it all, though I have read time and time again that gpus simply do not need this much bandwidth, after all, they are being fed and giving out small chunks of incomplete/complete data. Its the cpu to the rest of the system that needs the massive bandwidth for it to do its job.

I think for the most part it(at this time) is hype, nothing more, consumers simply are not tapping into what we are currently using let alone something that far exceeds it. The scaling simply put it not there to saturate it.

For example quad or beyond 9800Gx2 or dual GTX590 will and are fed happily via even pci-e 2.0 x4/x4 x8/x4 x8/x8 etc. My buddy in his case was using gtx590 quad sli with x8/4 then went to x8/x8 then x16/x8 finally x16/x16 and the only time he noticed a true gain was shifting from the x8 to x16 speeds which saw a gain of only an average of 8fps or so, he did say it felt alot smoother though it did not really show in the fps numbers.

I guess thats all I can really say. AMD makes gpu/cpu/motherboard as does intel in a roundabout kind of way, if there was a true pressing need, they would have adopted this years ago. From what I have heard, the whole pci-e 3.0 thing was more adopted for SSD pci-e performance then anything else AND it does relieve overhead that pci-e 2.0 has in its implementation, So, maybe that gain you are seeing with BF3 as the example is not that its running any faster, but rather it does not have the overhead penalization associated with it?
 
Heres my case, Im in the middle of a new build, I purchased an 15 2500k, my MOBO has PCIe-3, and im waiting to buy an HD 7970.

I plan on running a 30" monitor at 2560 x 1600, and a 24" touch screen monitor to run Helious for DCS Warthog (combat flight sim). I was just about to send back the 15 2500k while I still have time to return it so I can get a i5 3570k (for basically the same price I paid for the 2500k) so I can take advantage of the PCIe-3 performance. If I read this thread correctly, it seems I wont see any difference anyway? Thanks
 
You won't see any difference from PCIe 3.0, no, but it still might be worth switching out the CPU just for the general Ivy improvements (lower power, better quicksync, etc) if you weren't planning on high-end ovwerclocking.
 
cannot argue on the slight ipc improment if you were not planning on overclocking, if you were, it would be better for the most part to stick with sandy-bridge. Ivy bridge at least the ones that are here now, are not truly better in any direct regard vs sandy. If at stock they have a slight better performance clock for clock(IPC) better temperatures(2500k really is not that bad) better power drain(again 2500k is really not that bad) and like mentioned some general optimizations(quick sync if you use it, and pci-e 3.0 which shows no direct advantage at this time only "theroetical performance benefits, and possibly slightly better for "crunching tasks")

To my understanding, its simply far far easier to clock up that 2500k then any ivy-b without watching the temperatures/power skyrocket, much more difficult to get a good high clock out of ivy, partially apprently due to the fact that alot of Ivy have thier heatspreader attached via thermal paste instead of flux which could explain partially the high temperatures they get once trying to push them.
 
Im definatley planning on overclocking, using a Corsair H100 CPU cooler. I have been reading all day about the heat issues on the i5 3570k, seems anything over 4.7 will be problematic. Im aiming for 4.8 or better if I can. My primary concern was I wanted to get the most hourse power out of my HD 7970 as I could to run those monitors, and I didnt want to miss out on PCIe-3 performance for a PCI 3.0 GPU. If its not going to make a difference, I will go with the tried and true i5 2500k that I have already instead of sweating out the heat issue of the i5 3570. Thanks

Any other opinions are still welcome, I have 4 days to change my mind.
 
then you are better to stick with 2500k they can easily do 4.5+ alot of buddies and forum users with the right setup(and good chip) can have the 2500k running 4.8 or so. Ivy seems to not really like 4.6 or above, I simply wouldnt count on it anyways(heat, voltage, cherry chip needed etc) Simply put, there is a much better chance getting sandy up to the 4.6+ sometimes even 5Ghz mark without to much issues, Ivy on the other hand very very few have gotten anything close to that without a suicide run.

Honestly, you will not be bottlenecking any single card even some X2 cards with a core i7, they scale very nicely with clock speeds, thats granted, but I would not be to concerned with getting it to say 4.7Ghz and having to spend that much more on an H100 vs an H80. 4.5-4.6 seems easy to get, doesnt shoot out tons of heat, and is kind of the sweet spot before diminshing returns kick in, ivy seems around 4.2 or so. IPC doesnt give that much advantage of say 4.2vs 4.5, the 4.5 would win 98% of the time. Better to have sandy use faster clock speed with faster memory which would gain the advantage of the IPC difference between them if you catch what I am saying :)

like said, no real world benefits of pci-e 3.0 at this time(for graphics cards, its just a marketing gimmick for GPU if anything "look at us we are pci-e 3.0 twice the bandwidth") keep the 2500k its one hell of a chip(like the Q6600 was a few years back, but better)
 
dragonstongue said:
One game hardly makes the point that pci-e 3.0 is worth it.

If the bandwidth on the cards interface was needed, AMD, Nvidia, Intel, Via and other most def would have updated to pci-e 3.0 or beyond years ago. I do not know the match behind it all, though I have read time and time again that gpus simply do not need this much bandwidth, after all, they are being fed and giving out small chunks of incomplete/complete data. Its the cpu to the rest of the system that needs the massive bandwidth for it to do its job.

I think for the most part it(at this time) is hype, nothing more, consumers simply are not tapping into what we are currently using let alone something that far exceeds it. The scaling simply put it not there to saturate it.

For example quad or beyond 9800Gx2 or dual GTX590 will and are fed happily via even pci-e 2.0 x4/x4 x8/x4 x8/x8 etc. My buddy in his case was using gtx590 quad sli with x8/4 then went to x8/x8 then x16/x8 finally x16/x16 and the only time he noticed a true gain was shifting from the x8 to x16 speeds which saw a gain of only an average of 8fps or so, he did say it felt alot smoother though it did not really show in the fps numbers.

I guess thats all I can really say. AMD makes gpu/cpu/motherboard as does intel in a roundabout kind of way, if there was a true pressing need, they would have adopted this years ago. From what I have heard, the whole pci-e 3.0 thing was more adopted for SSD pci-e performance then anything else AND it does relieve overhead that pci-e 2.0 has in its implementation, So, maybe that gain you are seeing with BF3 as the example is not that its running any faster, but rather it does not have the overhead penalization associated with it?
Click to expand...

so better but not better? I know correlation != causation, but when the only difference in the test is the PCIE version


its the most intense game *currently* available, and the best cards.

and I specifically said, unless you are runing dual 79xx or 680's you wil llikely not see an improvement

another advantage of PCI3 and the new chipsets I beleive is more lanes total bandwidth period.

I also said he didnt need it, since he is looking at P67 it really doesnt matter anyways

go read that thread for more of vegas posts and info. the new high end stuff is really starting to break past PCIE2's limits apparently. .

LOL @ mentioning 9800GT's btw

I run xfire with a ref 6970 and an OC'd 6950 and I am CPU limited at this point @ 4.4 on a 2500K so I am not even worried about it
 
Last edited:
Yeah, I to caught the "look at us we are pci-e 3.0 twice the bandwidth" a couple of months ago, and was hyped up to implement it in my new rig. I had that mentality today as I was in the process of doing a return on my (still in the box) i5 2500k, so I could get the IVY because I am soon buying an HD 7970, I figured why not get the full potential out of the GPU. Man, I was surprised today when I read all about the overclocking issues on the i5 3570K's up to certain points, and the heat (even though Intel raised the tolerence of it). Wasnt pleasant reading at all. Thanks again for the info guys, I feel better knowing i wasnt going to get the performnace increase I was expexting going from PCIe-2 to 3.
 
well and this is something that haunter did point out that I did not mention.

More pci-e lanes. If you get a good board they can run dual cards at full pci-e 2.0 speed which will run perfectly fine. My buddy just got the top ivy 3770k I believe it was with the best board offered at the time of purchase(Asus rog something) he stated with GTX590x2(quad sli) he noticed no difference going from clocked 2600k(4.5Ghz) and the new IVY running at 4.2Ghz different configs yes, but overall no difference in frame rates what so ever, he even tried out the GTX680 on his old board vs the new one the only difference being the chip and board, and again he said no difference that he could tell(in multpile games)

So, if you used an older i7 say with 1x16 and 1x8 then went up to ivy with dual x16 then yes there would be a difference, but far as I have seen, both running at x16 x16 makes next to no difference if cpu clock speed is near ruled out pci-e 2.0 or pci-e 3.0. If there is ANY cards that can saturate the lanes, the 590s would have a very good chance, and they did not. So 2 single card simply would not.

His system btw, a pcie sound card(Xonar STX) dual Crucial M4 128gb in raid, and the dual 590, to single 590 to single 680 on an asus z68 V pro to the new one(again forget which specifically)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top