Can I run 4k with PCI-e 2.0?

[jbrighton]

I have a pretty old system with low specs – GigaByte F2A55M-DS2 motherboard with an AMD A4-5300 CPU. I recently upgraded the memory to 16GB DDR3 1866MHz (Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB).

I have ordered a 4K monitor which should be arriving tomorrow, and now I am wondering what graphics card would be best to drive the display. I was looking at GTX 1050 Ti cards, but I noticed that they are PCI-e 3.0 cards, and that my system only supports PCI-e 2.0. From what I can understand, it seems that 3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0 – is that correct, and does that mean that I can use the GTX card in my PC? I don't really want to spend more than necessary, so are there any cards that would be more suitable for my purposes?

I should probably point out that I'm not at all into gaming. My main uses will be Photoshop, and some video editing in Full HD (but not 4K). HDMI 2.0 is a must, as I want to run the display with a faster refresh rate than just 30Hz.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[D JAY Cva]

will work fine as long you dont run games ....

 

[Dragos Manea]

Yes the 1050 TI will work on your 2.0 pcie, a 2.0 pcie wont bottleneck even a 1070, your pcie will bottleneck only a sli configuration or a gtx 1080. As for gaming the 1050 ti is not powerfull enought to run any game at 4k, the only 4k capable card is the gtx 1080 and that under 60 fps with some settings turned on medium. For photoshop and other editing softwares like that one will work nice.

 

[jbrighton]

Thanks, I guess I need not look any further!

 

[xFeaRDom]

For future reference, the PCI-E 2.0 port is backwards compatible, as you already know. And the performance loss compared to a PCI-E 3.0 x16 Slot to a PCI-E 2.0 x16 Slot is too small to notice, probably around 1%, I run off of a motherboard that is almost 3 years old, has a PCI-E 2.0 x16 Slot, and I run a GTX 970 off of it, and when doing benchmarks, runs the exact same as other GTX 970's with other specifications. So the performance difference is basically invisible.

4K on games now, as said above, is only available on the GTX 1080, or recommended anyway, although games aren't really being coded for 4K, it is coming into fashion if you like, and people will start aiming there in the upcoming years, the GTX 1080 being the first major card for 4K that is on a gaming standard (I believe), and no doubt the next generation of AMD cards may aim for that too, and the next generation of Nvidia cards will aim higher, maybe setting the 2K (1440p) resolution at the minimum, sort of bringing the 1070 specifications into the lower end cards, not sure on the naming, but it'll probably be on the line of the 1160 or something :lol: which is probably going to be around the $250/£250 mark. Cannot say for sure but just guessing 😉

 

[jbrighton]

I did read on Wikipedia about backwards compatibility, but not being a techie I wasn't really sure whether I had understood it correctly, so I thought it would not do any harm to ask the experts instead of wasting my money on something which might not work (and I must say this forum is fantastic for getting quick and detailed answers to my questions!).

I didn't realise the difference between PCI-E 2.0 and PCI-E 3.0 was so marginal. Obviously my system is rather dated, but just the recent RAM upgrade from 4GB to 16GB has obviously made a huge difference to its performance. I am interested in getting into 3ds Max or Maya sometime in the future, but that would mean building a completely new system. The current one is never going to be used for anything other than 2D applications, and it seems that the GTX 1050 will nicely suit my purposes.

 

[xFeaRDom]

I did read on Wikipedia about backwards compatibility, but not being a techie I wasn't really sure whether I had understood it correctly, so I thought it would not do any harm to ask the experts instead of wasting my money on something which might not work (and I must say this forum is fantastic for getting quick and detailed answers to my questions!).

I didn't realise the difference between PCI-E 2.0 and PCI-E 3.0 was so marginal. Obviously my system is rather dated, but just the recent RAM upgrade has obviously made a huge difference to its performance. I am interested in getting into 3ds Max or Maya sometime in the future, but that would mean building a completely new system. The current one is never going to be used for anything other than 2D applications, and it seems that the GTX 1050 will nicely suit my purposes.

No harm in asking, its all I did when I first got into this.

Its surprising how much hardware changes over a few years, almost had my system for 2 years, feels like longer, more like 3 - Had to search when my CPU was released to check, Q2 2014. Still running strong as anything, and could probably last me a load longer.

But anyway, the 1050 is a really cheap card, but has some great performance packed into it, if it was me I'd go for a 1050Ti, for an extra £40 the added performance is worth it.

If you're wanting to get into that, upgrading your system slowly or all at once will benefit you, just make sure you're really into it and wont get bored of it, otherwise that's a lot of money down the drain 😛