Modern video card through PCI-e 1.0

[Danja]

Hello,

I have a quick question. How much would a modern-ish video card such an an NVidia 9800 or an ATI 48xx series be crippled by being forced to go through a PCI-e 1.0 x16 interface rather than 2.0 or 2.1? Would it be worth the purchase?

Thanks.

[petteyg359]

PCI-E 1.0 offers 250MB/s per lane. 16x = 4GB/s. If you're on a PCI-E 1.0 board, then your system memory is likely below that speed, so the PCI-E speed won't be any more of a bottleneck than the rest of the system, assuming that cards can actually saturate 4GB/s (I don't know whether they really use that much bandwidth or not).

[wingman99]

I went from PCI-E 16x 1.0 8GB/s to PCI-E 2.0 16GB/s

And I did not receive a FPS increase just like petteyg said your system is bottlenecked by the memory with the CPU comands.

However when tabbing in and out of games and playing two game, switching now is instantaneous, before I had to sit and wait for the map or desktop to load.:)

All I did was a motherboard change same memory, CPU, hard drive, didn't even format the drive, just loaded the new board drivers in the same OS.

[jaymz9350]

PCI-E 1.0 offers 250MB/s per lane. 16x = 4GB/s. If you're on a PCI-E 1.0 board, then your system memory is likely below that speed, so the PCI-E speed won't be any more of a bottleneck than the rest of the system, assuming that cards can actually saturate 4GB/s (I don't know whether they really use that much bandwidth or not).

He's talking about a PCI-E 16x 1.0 vs 16x 2.0


A 9800GT won't be bottle necked by a 16x 1.0 slot. Even today's high end single GPU cards take a minor hit at 8x 2.0 which is basically the same as a 16x 1.0 slot.

[Danja]

Thanks for the info! I have one last question. I'm thinking of getting a 9800 GTX+ but I'm not sure if I have room in the case. I think I have the 10 inch depth, but I'm concerned about the bulkiness of the card. I've attached a photobucket link with pictures of my case. Could someone who has seen one of these cards or knows its approximate dimensions estimate if it will fit?

http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y76/Danja91/PC/

[wingman99]

Can you post a picture here in the form, because I don't have a photo bucket account and can't see the picture.

[Danja]

Sorry, I didn't realize you needed a guest password. Here are the pictures:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76/Danja91/PC/th_0703001801.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y76/Danja91/PC/?action=view&current=0703001801.jpg)

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76/Danja91/PC/th_0703001801a.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y76/Danja91/PC/?action=view&current=0703001801a.jpg)

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76/Danja91/PC/th_0703001801b.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y76/Danja91/PC/?action=view&current=0703001801b.jpg)

[wingman99]

It will fit with no problems, it will use both of the two upper slots, the hole length of the card.:)

[Danja]

Thank you for the information!