Do I need PCI-E 3.0?

[Hrlyrdr22]

Basically I have a gaming/video editing PC. Now I kind of want a second graphics card but my current motherboard is a micro-atx board.

And I read the only reason you need 3.0 is with multiple graphics cards so here I am with a am3+ board. I think there is only one board with PCI E 3 and that's the Asus Sabertooth 990FX.

Also I have a SSD but it's only maxing out at about 150/200. Description on amazon shows 450mbs and imacs show 600+ mbs. I'm guessing my board has SATA 2 and SATA 2 is much slower than SATA 3?

Ugh I think upgrading my motherboard is on the top of my things to upgrade.

So basically do I need PCI-E 3 for 2 graphics card (SLI) and is SATA 2 slower than SATA 3?

 

[Saberus]

PCIe 3.0 isn't necessary for SLI, it just supports higher speeds which can lead to smoother performance.

Sata 2 is half as fast as Sata 3, which could explain the slower speeds of your SSD.

 

[joex444]

Most 990FX boards will run two cards with the second slot being PCIe 2.0 x4. This is the same as PCIe 3.0 x2 in bandwidth, and PCIe 2.0 x16 is the same as PCIe 3.0 x8 in bandwidth (it's not exact but it's within a few percent). Most graphics cards don't exhibit any substantial (more than 5%) performance drop until the bandwidth drops below PCIe 1.1 x16/PCIe 2.0 x8. At PCIe 2.0 x4 (PCIe 1.1 x8) there's about a 10% drop.

What this means is that your 2nd GPU with a 990FX chipset is going to lose about 5-10% of its performance, but you are clearly adding a second card so whatever scaling factor you get from going to SLI you should multiply that by about 0.9. (For example if a particular game plays at 35fps with 1 GPU and 55fps with 2, then you'd expect about 53fps with a PCIe 2.0 x4 mode on the second GPU).

Also, the maximum bandwidth for SATA-2 is 300MB/s while for SATA-3 it is 600MB/s. Almost all SSDs are capable of SATA-3 operation. Clearly if you want to have PCIe 3.0 x8/x8 SLI/CF configurations you'll need a new motherboard. And if you want SATA-3 with SLI your Micro ATX board can't handle a SATA card so you'd actually want to replace the motherboard.

 

[Hrlyrdr22]

PCIe 3.0 isn't necessary for SLI, it just supports higher speeds which can lead to smoother performance.

Sata 2 is half as fast as Sata 3, which could explain the slower speeds of your SSD.

For PCI 3, i dont mean requirement, but how much more FPS would i get in the newer games these days like GTA V, advanced warfare and upcoming black ops 3?

Currently have the GTX 750 superclocked card 2GB vram, It performs really well along but on newer games, it stutters here and there so I'm wondering how much more FPS i would get with dual gtx750 sc in SLI with only pci 2.0