# Diff b/w PCI-e 2.0 & PCI-E x16



## ninad_mhatre85 (Jul 27, 2011)

Hi All, 

What is the diff b/w PCI-e 2.0 & PCI-E x16 slot ? i have ordered ATI HD 5670 and then i realized that i have PCI-E x16 slot and this card gives optimum performance on PCI-E 2.0 socket.  

I already made payment but will this card work on my mobo : GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket AM3 - GA-MA74GMT-S2 (rev. 1.0)


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## desiibond (Jul 28, 2011)

PCIe 2.0 is standard/set of rules. like USB2, USB3

PCIe X16 means that the slot has 16 lines connecting it to chipset or whatever. If PCIe-1X = 250MBps, X16 has a throughput of 133x16= 4000MBps in each direction. Every board that comes with a single PCIe slot will have the slot setup at 16X speed. In case of low end boards having two PCIe slots, both will be X16 but when you connect two GPUs, they run at X8 speed in each direction and in some boards, they will be running at x4 speed, rarely bottlenecking the GPUs.

PCIe 1.0: data rate of 250 MB/s per lane.
PCIe 2.0: data rate of 500 MB/s per lane.
PCIe 3.0: data rate of 1GB/s per lane (approx)


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## Cilus (Jul 28, 2011)

^^ Nice piece of info there, Desibond. +1 Rep for you.


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## ninad_mhatre85 (Jul 28, 2011)

@desiibond : Will i be able to run this card on my Mobo , coz card says PCI-E 2.0 complaint, so i hope i can run this card. 

Also , i have 1 PCI-e slot & 1 PCI-E x16 slot now where to put the new card ?


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## Zangetsu (Jul 28, 2011)

ninad_mhatre85 said:


> Also , i have 1 PCI-e slot & 1 PCI-E x16 slot now where to put the new card ?



put the card in x16 slot


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## desiibond (Jul 28, 2011)

ninad_mhatre85 said:


> @desiibond : Will i be able to run this card on my Mobo , coz card says PCI-E 2.0 complaint, so i hope i can run this card.
> 
> Also , i have 1 PCI-e slot & 1 PCI-E x16 slot now where to put the new card ?




blue colored x16 slot. That is the only slot where your GPU will fit to. and don't worry about compatiblity. it should work. what PSU do you have btw and which processor are you using?

PS: next time, when you are buying something, do check if it works with your mobo or not, just to be on safe side.


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## ninad_mhatre85 (Jul 28, 2011)

Thankx all for your reply ... 

I did check my mobo but i thought PCI-E x16 slot can handle HD 5670 but then after placing an older i realized that card gives optimum performance with PCI-E 2.0 slot. So i was confused and just wanted to make sure it will work before putting in slot. 

I have 500 Watt PSU. With AMD Processor. I decided for ATI because of my procy.


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## desiibond (Jul 28, 2011)

ninad_mhatre85 said:


> Thankx all for your reply ...
> 
> I did check my mobo but i thought PCI-E x16 slot can handle HD 5670 but then after placing an older i realized that card gives optimum performance with PCI-E 2.0 slot. So i was confused and just wanted to make sure it will work before putting in slot.
> 
> I have 500 Watt PSU. With AMD Processor. I decided for ATI because of my procy.



1. Not all 500W PSUs are efficient. Though for your GPU, any 500W PSU will work. which brand is it btw.
2. ATI works best with AMD is a myth. again, in your case, there is no competing nVidia card.


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## AcceleratorX (Aug 1, 2011)

Hello,

In general, it should work. PCIe 2.x specification was meant to be backward compatible. However, some cards' video BIOS may be incompatible with the motherboard BIOS. This is usually fixed by a motherboard BIOS update. You may want to check if your motherboard has had a BIOS update for supporting newer PCIe 2.x graphics cards.

Note: HD 5670 comes in PCIe 2.0 or 2.1 depending on the brand. 2.0 will have better compatibility. Either way, it shouldn't be a big problem since you are using an AMD chipset.

Performance does not vary if you use a non-AMD chipset. But compatibility issues can arise due to timing configurations of the signal. AMD graphics cards are tested to work well on AMD chipset motherboards. On the other hand, there are known compatibility issues of Radeon HD 5000 series cards on some older nForce motherboards (nForce 5xx/6xx/780i series) which were fixed through a motherboard BIOS update.

BTW: You can use NVIDIA or ATI card irrespective of your CPU or chipset. It makes zero difference in performance. AMD + ATI is no different than Intel + ATI, for example.


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