Difference between PCI 3.0 vs PCI 2.0

[thefoxer]

I was looking at AMD motherboards with the 990fx chipset when i realized that only fm1/fm2 boards seem to have 3.0 PCIe x16 slots whereas the intel z87 chipset boards all seem to support PCIe 3.0.

Why is that? And does having the 3.0 over the 2.0 make that much of a difference? in regards to graphics card power for gaming.

 

[ihog]

There is not much difference between PCIe 3.0 x16 and PCIe 2.0 x16. It won't hinder gaming performance much at all, especially with mid-tier cards.

 

[jrazor247]

It's important to mention PCI-E 3.0 is twice as fast. So 3.0 8x has same bandwidth as 2.0 16x. So just keep in mind you don't really need 2 PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot for SLI or Crossfire. Even with 2.0, 8x is ample most of the time.

 

[Aj Accardi]

According to all benchmarks I have seen PCI-E 3.0 & 2.0 have less then a 1.5 fps difference with almost all cards! In fact some benchmarks show gains from using 2.0 over 3.0 but again .5-1.5 Fps even in 4K. Also It has been proven time and time again that 16x Vs 8x really doesn't matter! Less then 1 Fps! Here are some benchmarks www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/ !