Can an HD 6870 work on a PCI-E x16 slot without ANY performance loss?

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Phil135

Phil135

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Nov 20, 2011
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Hello everybody! I just joined this site after realizing what great community and site this is! But moving on to the important stuff, I was wondering if an XFX Radeon HD 6870 1GB would be fully compatible with a PCI Express x16 slot without ANY performance loss, as I am building a new computer and want to know if I can reuse my old motherboard (Link to the motherboard specs is down below). From the apparent specs I saw on my motherboard it only has a PCI Express x16 slot, but the 6870 is designed to utilize PCI Express 2.0x16. I have heard that a PCI-E 2.0x16 has twice the bandwidth of x16, and that PCI-E 2.0x16 is meant for multi-GPU setups (I will only have one card), so 2.0x16 GPU's can work just as effectively on x16 without any performance loss. Thanks in advance!

Motherboard:
http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c01946060&printver=true

Graphics Card:
http://www.amazon.com/XFX-Radeon-DisplayPort-PCI-Express-HD687AZNFC/dp/B0047ZH7GE/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1321828131&sr=1-2
 
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A single 6950 is fully compatible with any pci-e X16 slot.

No doubt there is SOME theoretical performance degradation with an older slot. But, it would take a benchmark to be able to detect a minuscule difference, one that you could not detect in actual usage. Think. <1fps.

The practical answer is not to worry about it.
 
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Wow I really appreciate the quick responses! And I have been doing research on my question for a couple hours now and haven't found too much hahaha! The problem for me is that I really need to upgrade several parts on my computer and the upcoming Black Friday sale will prove to be a perfect chance to do so. But the hd 6870 is plenty of an upgrade for me and has a low TDP as well as cooling. So the problem I'm having is whether I should just get a new motherboard (which would cost at least $100) or cheap it out and hope for the best xD
 
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Yeah I already have a 600W PSU that I'm going to buy, along with a new WD Caviar Black 1TB as a second hard drive, an hd 6870, and a new mirrored case to fit all of this in. My serious question remains in whether there is ANY possible performance/hardware degradation if I use the xfx hd 6870 in a PCI-E x16 slot, as well as how much it could possible hinder the 6870 if I were to install it.
 
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Hahaha well thanks a lot guys, I'm HONESTLY very impressed with how fast everyone responds here and the tons of actually USEFUL and DEPENDABLE information I get! And I guess I'll go for it then, I'll try to give my motherboard hell with the 6870 once I get it this upcoming Black Friday! I gathered about $500-$600 worth of parts to upgrade my *** HP built computer, and the only thing I'm reusing is the HDD, CPU, motherboard, and ram hahaha, the rest I'll prob burn >😀 jk
 
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Wait, so what exactly do you mean by this? That you assume my current motherboard (http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c01946060&printver=true) is 2.0x16 because it's a P55 chipset? I don't quite follow with this because I haven't really looked too much into motherboards and forgot everything about chipsets 😛
 
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Sorry for posting a ton of long replies, but this whole in-depth look brought up another question: Would a stock XFX Radeon HD 6870 1GB even fit on my motherboard? Because it really looks like it would overlap the RAM modules...
 
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stuff I have seen says its 2.0 but it should work anyway. gpuz might tell you. as for the memory you'd probably need to put the memory in before the gpu and take the gpu out to remove memory, due to the latches. but it doesn't look like it would overlap your ram... gpus boards don't really extend past the top of the pci-e slot... at least none I have ever seen
 
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Yeah I know that there are factory over clocked 6870's out there, but I need the cheapest 6870 I can find, as long as it's a stable card and doesn't get broken soon. I went with the stock version of XFX because it's quite cheap, it's a reputable company, and from what I hear it's got a good reputation with not breaking down. What other aftermarket 6870's are there that would be no more expensive than the XFX and are possibly faster/better? I've seen the xfx for $180 on amazon but it seemed to be more expensive on newegg 😛 Any suggestions?
 
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The basic guts of a 6850 are all made by amd. The cards will differ by the type of cooling solution each vendor installs. The reliability should not be much different.
Here is a report on return rates for graphics cards:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-5/components-returns-rates.html

As to pricing, check the current sales.
 
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I was actually looking for a 6870... But nevertheless, I installed GPU-Z and found out that my HD 4850 1GB's Bus Interface "Supports PCI-Express x16 v2.0" and "is running at PCI-Express x16 v2.0". I'm going to assume that this means that my motherboard has a 2.0x16 slot. I have a picture:
http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/11/11/23/38s.png

A side question now is whether I would be able to use my main hard drive and use a second hard drive for storage on this same motherboard:
http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c01946060&printver=true
 
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I got a new computer build with an MSI Radeon HD 6950 2GB. I got all of my parts installed, they work, and the graphics card's fans work, etc. the problem I'm having is that I cannot get my computer to display anything on the monitor despite it working in the case. Now, although it is a new computer BUILD, I'm using some parts from my old computer such as an i5-750, 8GB of DDR3 ram, the old hard drive (with ALL of the old data AND old copy of Windows 7 64 bit installed, ALONG with the old graphics card's drivers [radeon hd 4850 1gb]), and the old motherboard:
http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c01946060&printver=true
I don't know what to do to get it to work because it has all of the old base parts such as the motherboard, CPU, ram, AND the old hard drive with all of the old data on there, INCLUDING the operating system and the drivers for my old graphics card! And even so, nothing will show up on my monitor! I've even used my OLD graphics card with the SAME motherboard and it STILL won't work! It says that it's connected to my PC and it RECOGNIZES is but it will just say "NO SIGNAL".
Please help!
 
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Well, I got my new parts now! I got a new Thermaltake A90 case, a Thermaltake TR2 600W psu, a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB hard drive, along with an MSI Radeon HD 6950 2GB! I got them all setup into my case, but I have another problem with the display! Nothing will show up! If you can help me please leave a reply on my other thread:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=33&post=334150&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0
 
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Wow, we'll it turns out that it was actually just my mistake, I forgot to plug in the 4-pin Molex connector to the CPU! It was my first time ever building a computer but now it's finished and working
 
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