Will i need to upgrade my motherboard (and by extension my CPU) to use a newer card.

[dottaman88]

I have a P9X79 PRO motherboard with an asus gtx 670 and am looking to upgrade the graphics card very soon, I was wondering if i needed a hardware change to use a gtx 1080/Ti or one of the new RTX cards? Thanks for any help.

 

[clutchc]

Absolutely not. The board/CPU should be fine for any card your PSU can support.

 

[dottaman88]

Absolutely not. The board/CPU should be fine for any card your PSU can support.

Great stuff, thank you. Built the thing in 2012 with a 3930k and hadn't really kept up with what is new so didn't know if anything had changed in regards to connectivity (pci-e etc). Thanks again.

 

[clutchc]

That i7-3930K is still a strong CPU for an older 3rd gen. Still in the top tier for gaming as per Tom's GPU Hierarchy Chart. Should still provide the necessary throughput to run the GTX 1080/1080 Ti.

 

[dottaman88]

That i7-3930K is still a strong CPU for an older 3rd gen. Still in the top tier for gaming as per Tom's GPU Hierarchy Chart. Should still provide the necessary throughput to run the GTX 1080/1080 Ti.

Yeah I knew the chip was still fairly strong, never overclocked it either so still got some wiggle room. Read a thing that said the chip didn't support pci-e 3.0 , at least officially, is that true and would it make a difference if it were limited to 2.0?

 

[clutchc]

The CPU supports PCIe 3.0, as does the motherboard. Early users of X79 boards reported some issues, but if I remember correctly, there was a patch that fixed it. And later BIOS updates. And it only happened with some X79 boards.
In the case of your board, the early 0906 BIOS had a PCIe 3.0 enhancement that may have been the fix. I suspect as long as you have a late/the latest BIOS, you're good.

 

[dottaman88]

Excellent, that's pretty much all my worries about upgrading put to rest as i did the bios update a while ago and there hasn't been a new one since. You've been great thank you.