PCIE 2.0 vs 3.0

[Paradox_2]

Im helping a friend pick parts for a gaming PC. He has an MSI GTX 970 and an i5 4460. I found this motherboard(https://www.amazon.com/MSI-Intel-Micro-Motherboard-H81M-E33/dp/B00F42W70A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496426361&sr=8-1&keywords=MSI+H81M-E33) and saw it only had pcie 2.0. Will this have a big performance drop from 3.0?

 

[TheMacke]

Hello there.

PCIe 2.0 shouldn't be an issue. Even though it has less bandwidth, it won't be a bottleneck in your system. There is already a discussion about this about this (link: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2694698/pcie.html). You should keep in mind that PCIe 2.0 16x has the same bandwidth as PCIe 3.0 8x. Any chart or benchmark will not show any difference between these two.

Kind regards
-Marcus

 

[boosted1g]

So 2.0 has 500 MB/sec per lane, while 3.0 has 1GB/sec per lane.

With that said even a Gtx 1080 ti will only saturate 8x PCI 3.0 bandwidth so 16x PCI-E 2.0 is still enough for a 1080ti