So my HIS X1950 pro arrived in the mail today, and I'm looking at the fine print on the box for system requirements when I notice it says "PCI Express 3 chipset-driver installed". Hmmm, didn't notice that when I was researching the board. I check the documentation for my PX915P-pro MB, and it says "all PCI Express slots are fully PCI Express 1.0a compliant". Ack! Is a PCIe v3 video card backward compatible with a PCIe 1.0a MB, or am I hosed? My PS has a PCIe connector and I recently updated the chipset drivers, will this be enough to get the board to work in my system? I don't mind if it works in a degraded performance mode (it will still be better than the 6600GT it is intended to replace), I just want to know if it will work at all!
darkstar782
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There is no such thing as PCIe v3.
PCIe 2.0 is on the x38 motherboard chipset, but there are as yet no PCIe 2.0 gfx cards.
All gfx cards are PCIe 1 spec, it will work fine. Have you tried it yet?
PCIe 2.0 is on the x38 motherboard chipset, but there are as yet no PCIe 2.0 gfx cards.
All gfx cards are PCIe 1 spec, it will work fine. Have you tried it yet?
TheGreatGrapeApe
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There are no PCIe 3.0 cards out yet, and the X1950Pro is PCIe 1.1 not even 2.0, and it is backwards compatible with PCIe 1.0a (which is usually associated with the 4X electrical slots when it comes to PEG slots).
If you list you MoBo someone can probably tell you what slots you have, but my guess is if you're moving from a GF6600GT PCIe model, then it is highly likely to be a PCIe 1.1 compliant 16X slot.
Specs are 1.0a - > 1.1a -> 2.0 (which is very recent and only the very latest and demo boards have support for 2.0 [which is backwards compatible]).
PCIe 3.0 isn't even finalized yet (2.0 just got finalized then cert this year), so don't worry about it.
Plugging a PCIe 1.1 card into a 1.0a PEG/16xGraphics slot is fine, but you'd run a little slower. However it's unlikely your board has one of those unless you have 2 graphics slots where one will be 1.1 and the other will be 1.0a.
If you list you MoBo someone can probably tell you what slots you have, but my guess is if you're moving from a GF6600GT PCIe model, then it is highly likely to be a PCIe 1.1 compliant 16X slot.
Specs are 1.0a - > 1.1a -> 2.0 (which is very recent and only the very latest and demo boards have support for 2.0 [which is backwards compatible]).
PCIe 3.0 isn't even finalized yet (2.0 just got finalized then cert this year), so don't worry about it.
Plugging a PCIe 1.1 card into a 1.0a PEG/16xGraphics slot is fine, but you'd run a little slower. However it's unlikely your board has one of those unless you have 2 graphics slots where one will be 1.1 and the other will be 1.0a.
Whew, that is a relief. I haven't tried it yet, I wanted to be certain it was compatible first. PCIe bus version compatibility doesn't come in any video card discussions so I was surprised by what it said on the X1950pro's box. (Honest it really says "PCI Express 3 chipset driver installed" in the system requirements!) My MB is an Albabatron PX-915P Pro. It has one PCIe slot. Thanks for the replies.
TheGreatGrapeApe
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Uh, yes there is;
http://www.pcisig.com/news_room/08_08_07/
Once again there is, the R600 is PCIe 2.0 compliant as shown in early tests of it running without the second set of power plugs;
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/05/17/amd-demoes-pcie-20-in-action
BTW, there are more picture of that example, but that one clearly shows only 1 power plug plugged in on the HD2900XT.
Well all of them will be 1.1 compliant, but the rumour is that some of the future cards (G92/RV670 ?) are having issues with 1.0a spec slots in older SLi/Xfire boards. But since his isn't one of those future card it should be fine.
TheGreatGrapeApe
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I think that that is meant to be in a different order, something like "PCI Express chipset driver ver 3 installed"
Well it should also have two PCIe 1X slots but it does have just one PEG / 16X slot ;
http://www.albatron.com.tw/English/product/mb/pro_detail.asp?rlink=Overview&no=122
Looking briefly at the literature is has 1.0A and 1.0 support explicitly, which should be fine for X1950Pro, intel's own docs on it say 1.0a on the PCIe 16X slot, but it was written before 1.1 was finalized.
F34R1355
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Perhaps it is a typo? Maybe it should be PCI Express & Chipset driver?
Or maybe even just garbage put on the box to make it look impressive. Most of the time the guys in marketing know nothing about the card. They figure most people that look at the box won't know what they are actually even looking at. They just think bigger number is better performance. Another good example of this is 512MB ram on video cards. Or better yet is a computer at the store the other day had a sticker advertising 160GB Harddisk for more memory. Because of the sticker people think that harddisk space = memory.
Little bit of rant there... bad habit.
Or maybe even just garbage put on the box to make it look impressive. Most of the time the guys in marketing know nothing about the card. They figure most people that look at the box won't know what they are actually even looking at. They just think bigger number is better performance. Another good example of this is 512MB ram on video cards. Or better yet is a computer at the store the other day had a sticker advertising 160GB Harddisk for more memory. Because of the sticker people think that harddisk space = memory.
Little bit of rant there... bad habit.
darkstar782
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Well ok, there is an non-finalised standard, but there are no PCIe v3 products available.
I suppose by your logic it would be incorrect to state that there is no such thing as Core 3, as nehalem is in the labs and will likely be called Core 3 when it is released.
But does it actually support the higher data rate of PCIe 2 or does it just use power from whatever source is available? I don't really care where the power comes from, as long as the card works, the interface speed is far more relevant.
Not that doubling the speed of PCIe x16 is the point of PCIe v2 anyway, its more about the shortening of latencies as the packet headers can be transmitted twice as fast, and removing the need for as many lanes in the hardware - devices that previously needed PCIe x4 can now get away with PCIe x2 etc.
And since he doesn't have one of these your attempt to pick apart my post to start an argument is pointless 😛
Still, I'm sceptical about this one. I remember everyone saying that my 8800GTX ONLY worked in x16 mode when I got it, and if you wanted SLI you had to use a x16/x16 board rather than a x8/x8 board.
andybird123
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Tell you what, you use the command line option for force High quality textures in GRAW or GRAW2 on a 256mb card and then tell me VRAM makes no difference.
TheGreatGrapeApe
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Sure if someone asked me a question based on them, just like I wouldn't say that Hawk or Larrabee or Fusion don't exist, if someone asked about them. Like I did in my post I said, they are future products and not a concern, not that they don't exist.
Not really, both a relevant as people have different needs, just as many don't have or don't want additional power plugs.
and how would is work on 'previous devices' if they aren't compliant with the new standard. You can't just plug a legacy 1X card in and expect to get 2X speeds if it doesn't support the higher frequency.
Except for the part where the focus of my picking your post apart was the erros and simplifications. So would you prefer instead in response to "All gfx cards are PCIe 1 spec, it will work fine", that I simply remind you of AGP, PCI, PCI-X and ISA graphics cards?
We won't know until they arrive, they may iron them bugs out by that time, like they did with 8X AGP and early PCIe, but when they reported it about a month ago there were issues, and it was said they weren't going to be fixing it. But things can always change of course. I don't know which boards were being refered to for the GF8800, but they do work at 1X speed, it's not just a question of the speed and lane number, but the chipset support as well. So that may have been the issue.
*PS* sorry about the edit, the forum software traffic from the serve is slow today and is not displaying the full page, hit edit instead of reply as I couldn't see the icon. I didn't change your content, but one or two sentences are missing from when I was triming to answer. However the meat of the post is still there as it was.
darkstar782
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I was trying to give the guy a simple, quick answer, as it seemed to me what he needed was "no it wont work" or "yes it will work".
You are right, there are even Vesa Local Bus (I remember my old 2mb Cirrus Logic VLB card!) and EISA gfx cards, but I just thought it was too much detail and clouded the issue.... each to his own.
I'm not sure exactly how "legacy" PCIe v1 devices work on PCIe v2 slots, there is more than likely some provision for negotiating signalling speeds just as there is number of lanes.
I wasn't talking about older devices in PCIe v2 ports, I just meant that it seems to me that the effectively reduced latency of PCIe v2 over v1, and the fact that if I want say, 1GB of bandwidth in each direction for an add-in card I am designing I can use PCIe 2.0 x2 rather than PCIe 1.x x4, potentially this means chipsets can get away with fewer lanes saving die space and reducing heat output, and that these two benefits seem more relevant to me than the fact that x16 2.0 is capable of pushing even more data when not much needed the capacity of PCIe x16 1.x
I would still like to know if the x2900XT is taking advantage of the higher signalling rate (although I cant see it being of much benefit) or just drawing power from the slot rather than the PCIe supplementary power connectors..... I'm also wondering if my 8800GTX will work with 1 power connector now - on my old 975X board (obviously not PCIe 2.0) it had a really annoying high pitched alarm sound with just 1 connector....
You are right, there are even Vesa Local Bus (I remember my old 2mb Cirrus Logic VLB card!) and EISA gfx cards, but I just thought it was too much detail and clouded the issue.... each to his own.
I'm not sure exactly how "legacy" PCIe v1 devices work on PCIe v2 slots, there is more than likely some provision for negotiating signalling speeds just as there is number of lanes.
I wasn't talking about older devices in PCIe v2 ports, I just meant that it seems to me that the effectively reduced latency of PCIe v2 over v1, and the fact that if I want say, 1GB of bandwidth in each direction for an add-in card I am designing I can use PCIe 2.0 x2 rather than PCIe 1.x x4, potentially this means chipsets can get away with fewer lanes saving die space and reducing heat output, and that these two benefits seem more relevant to me than the fact that x16 2.0 is capable of pushing even more data when not much needed the capacity of PCIe x16 1.x
I would still like to know if the x2900XT is taking advantage of the higher signalling rate (although I cant see it being of much benefit) or just drawing power from the slot rather than the PCIe supplementary power connectors..... I'm also wondering if my 8800GTX will work with 1 power connector now - on my old 975X board (obviously not PCIe 2.0) it had a really annoying high pitched alarm sound with just 1 connector....
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