[SOLVED] new GPU really not compatible with motherboard ?

Sep 1, 2022
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Long story short i bought a GTX 1050TI to replace my gt 1030 in my old system with a asrock 980DE3/U3S3 motherboard. Tried everything but couldnt get it to work, ive went to return it to the shop where i bought it and they tried to figure out why it wasnt working. conclusion by them, motherboard doesnt suport this card and wont suport any newer cards.

im questioning that (altho im no where near an expert my self), the GTX 1050ti is a PCI-e 3.0 x16 and the motherboard is a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (PCIE3 @ x16 mode) .... 3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0 right ? the gt 1030 also works in my system. Am i missing something ? if so any recomendations to a card that could work are welcome.
 
Solution
They were partly right, but partly wrong. It depends on the card on question. Some cards back then required a uefi bios that was GOP compliant, some would work with either, some even have physical switches for legacy/uefi bios.

The GT1030 is newer than the 1050ti. You have a legacy bios on that old am3+ platform. The GT1030 will work with either bios type automatically switching.

Msi and Evga have cards that have switchable vbios.

Pcie is compliant all the way back to pcie 1.1, but it's on the vendor specifically whether any card get equipped with that possibility. With the switch to uefi vbios, many decided it wasn't worth it to add the extra circuitry as later Z77+ mobo's with Ivy-Bridge cpus all came with Intel Management Engine8...

DSzymborski

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Yup, that sounds about right. GTX 900 GPUs and newer (a GT 1030 is not a GTX) require UEFI. I'm relatively certain that this motherboard uses legacy, not UEFI. The behavior is consistent with that. The shop should have thought of this fairly quickly, though at least they appear to have eventually. As such, it's customary never to recommend anything newer than a GTX 750 Ti when someone has a motherboard/chipset from before 2011 or 2012.
 
Sep 1, 2022
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Yup, that sounds about right. GTX 900 GPUs and newer (a GT 1030 is not a GTX) require UEFI. I'm relatively certain that this motherboard uses legacy, not UEFI. The behavior is consistent with that.
Thank you ! u made it make sense for me now, i bought it with a GTX 970 so im assuming the 900 range were the last that are compatible. Any newer cards that could be comptatible or should i focus on the secondhand markt ?
 

Karadjgne

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They were partly right, but partly wrong. It depends on the card on question. Some cards back then required a uefi bios that was GOP compliant, some would work with either, some even have physical switches for legacy/uefi bios.

The GT1030 is newer than the 1050ti. You have a legacy bios on that old am3+ platform. The GT1030 will work with either bios type automatically switching.

Msi and Evga have cards that have switchable vbios.

Pcie is compliant all the way back to pcie 1.1, but it's on the vendor specifically whether any card get equipped with that possibility. With the switch to uefi vbios, many decided it wasn't worth it to add the extra circuitry as later Z77+ mobo's with Ivy-Bridge cpus all came with Intel Management Engine8 which negated any need for legacy compatibility.

Find a card with auto switching, or a card with a physical switch and it'll work just fine, without that legacy vbios ability, the card won't work.
 
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Solution

DSzymborski

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Thank you ! u made it make sense for me now, i bought it with a GTX 970 so im assuming the 900 range were the last that are compatible. Any newer cards that could be comptatible or should i focus on the secondhand markt ?

Yeah, as Karadjgne notes -- and I should have -- UEFI support was required, but legacy BIOS support wasn't forbidden. I hope you don't mind, but I moved the best solution to Karadjgne as his answer was more accurate.

What happened to the 970? It would be better than a 1050 Ti.
 
Sep 1, 2022
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They were partly right, but partly wrong. It depends on the card on question. Some cards back then required a uefi bios that was GOP compliant, some would work with either, some even have physical switches for legacy/uefi bios.

The GT1030 is newer than the 1050ti. You have a legacy bios on that old am3+ platform. The GT1030 will work with either bios type automatically switching.

Msi and Evga have cards that have switchable vbios.

Pcie is compliant all the way back to pcie 1.1, but it's on the vendor specifically whether any card get equipped with that possibility. With the switch to uefi vbios, many decided it wasn't worth it to add the extra circuitry as later Z77+ mobo's with Ivy-Bridge cpus all came with Intel Management Engine8 which negated any need for legacy compatibility.

Find a card with auto switching, or a card with a physical switch and it'll work just fine, without that legacy vbios ability, the card won't work.
sorry i have to ask for clarification on this but if i understand it correctly i should look for a card that has switchable vbios and those could work ?

edit nevermind you already answerd that question, didnt see it
 
Sep 1, 2022
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Yeah, as Karadjgne notes -- and I should have -- UEFI support was required, but legacy BIOS support wasn't forbidden. I hope you don't mind, but I moved the best solution to Karadjgne as his answer was more accurate.

What happened to the 970? It would be better than a 1050 Ti.
The 970 died, replaced it with a second hand AMD R7970 LIGHTNING but that one broke after after a month (this all happend during the GPU crisis) got suspicious of the powersuply so went for cards that draw power from the motherboard but thats an whole other topic to get into. also put me off from the secondhand market because the cared i bought was suposed to be refurbished and checked. thats why im looking for new.
 

Karadjgne

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I found that Gigabyte and PNY also have cards, the gtx1650 will also work with legacy bios, but that's getting to the point where the gpu is stronger than the pcie the motherboard can deal with. Not really an issue as such, but the 1650 is capable of saturating pcie 2.3 that's on that board so you'd run into motherboard fps limits even if the cpu was capable of higher.

Be like trying to pack 6lbs of stuff into a 5lb bag.
 
Sep 1, 2022
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I found that Gigabyte and PNY also have cards, the gtx1650 will also work with legacy bios, but that's getting to the point where the gpu is stronger than the pcie the motherboard can deal with. Not really an issue as such, but the 1650 is capable of saturating pcie 2.3 that's on that board so you'd run into motherboard fps limits even if the cpu was capable of higher.

Be like trying to pack 6lbs of stuff into a 5lb bag.
the GTX 1650 was actually my first pick before i realized it would bottleneck with this cpu, from what people told me the gtx 1050ti was my best bet. its still unclear to me what other problems i could encounter besides bottlenecking. do you think its a good idea to get the 1650 and accept im gonna hit fps limits (or would that make games unplayable?) maybe use it like that for a while untill i have the money to buy an other budget setup the 1650 wouldnt bottleneck in ?
 

Karadjgne

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A gpu cannot bottleneck a cpu. The cpu is responsible for all fps, it creates everything into the frame, then ships that to the gpu. If the gpu is strong enough, it can reproduce everything the cpu sends it, regardless of resolution or detail settings. If it not strong enough then something has to give, usually lowering detail settings to get desired fps.

If the gpu is too strong, it can go under-utilized, but that can and does change per game. In something like CSGO, it's graphically simple enough to easily see max fps on a potato gpu. Farcry6 with HD pack is the exact opposite, graphically challenging enough to balk a RTX3070 at 1080p.

So broad statements such as the gpu bottlenecking the cpu are incorrect. You'll get whatever fps the cpu can supply, the gpu will reproduce that, or not.
With a FX processor, you'll be cpu limited from the start, most games are coded to take advantage of single thread performance, sadly lacking in the FX, which concentrated on multi-thread performance.

If you want the 1650, go for it👍. Better that the gpu at least isn't generally a limiting factor, than settle for the GT1030, which will be.
 
Sep 1, 2022
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Someone just brought to my attention that the GTX1050ti I got in theory should work, it was a Gigabyte 1050ti and for them, it works in on pci 1.0 in legacy bios. In other forums I've found I'm not the only who has/had this issue and there is no clear answer to which cards will work. They just tried a bunch of cards until they found one that would work, so I'm not sure what to do now. Buy cards and try them out one by one ? Surely there should be some guidelines to follow to find a card that works.
 

Karadjgne

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No guidelines. It was very hit and miss. Some ppl reported the Gigabyte Windforce as working, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Windforce OC will as it's a different pcb underneath.

And it would have been pcie 1.1, not 1.0. There's a marked difference in power delivery, a 1.0 card won't work on a 1.1 board and nothing except a 1.0 card works on a 1.0 board. That first gen pcie, once they left the AGPx8 slots, was a minor disaster, which is why both amd and nvidia revamped everything. One of the few times they ever agreed on anything 🤣
 

alexbirdie

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Sep 1, 2022
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Why 2 threads for the same?

yea my bad, i got confused with multiple forums because i tried to gather as much info as i could.