Does PCI Express 3.0 GPU Support My Mobo ?

razychowdhury

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Jul 11, 2010
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Hi, I am going to buy a new GPU, but not sute if my Mobo is going to support that. Please can I have the experts solutions for selecting my card.

Here is my current PC configuration,

MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3
CPU: Core i5 760
GPU: SAPPHIRE HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 PCIE
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1333 FSB.
MONITOR: Samsung U28D590D (4k Supported), Currently using 2560x1440px with DP v1.1.
HDD: 1TB WD NAS Support.
PSU: Thermaltech 750W

What can i see is my Mobo is showing me it's PCI Express 2.0 but i liked this GPU "SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X R9 280X 3G GDDR5 TRI-X STD WITH BOOST" Which is "PCI Express 3.0".

So, my question is, can i use this "SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X R9 280X 3G GDDR5 TRI-X STD WITH BOOST" with my MOBO "GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3" ?

Or Is there any other solution to choose the right card?
 
Solution
PCIe 3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0, so you've got nothing to worry about. GPU's don't even utilize the full bandwidth of 2.0, so you're performance will be unaffected.

razychowdhury

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Thanks For the info. Can you tell me one more thing, is that GPU capable to give me the highest resolution, i mean 4k ?
 

davidarad02

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while the GPU can output 4k video, its WAY too weak to play 4k games. if you want to watch 4k video, you'll be just fine.
 
Agree with the others, a single R9 280X is not really capable of 4k gaming, although it should be more than enough for other tasks at that res.
A stronger card, like the R9 290X or GTX980 will run on the existing motherboard, probably without issues, but if you go that route I strongly advise you to update the motherboard BIOS beforehand, not all new cards play nice with 'old' motherboards.
Whichever card you decide on, don't be worried about losing performance because of the PCI-E version, not even the GTX980 suffers any performance loss on a PCI-E 2.0 slot: http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/pci-express-scaling-game-performance-analysis-review,1.html

A few additional points:
Never heard of that power supply maker (or did you mean 'Thermaltake'?) so if you decide on a much stronger card it would, in my opinion, be a good idea to swap it for something of similar Wattage but from a better known maker.
Good as it was the i5 760 is beginning to show its age, consider overclocking it to give the new video card a chance to give its full performance.
 

razychowdhury

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Sorry for the wrong spelling, yes, you are right, it's "Thermaltake".
 


you will be fine pci 3 will work with pci 3 you wont notice any difference due to applications still not taking advantage of pci 3
 


you can run 4k with it but will have to run everything on low and in alot of games will still not pull over 40 fps