Whats the slowest cpu you can possibly pair with a 4090?

[aren332]

At first thought, it can be the slowest cpu that supports PCIe 4.0, but a 4090 should work on older PCIe versions, just at slower speeds, right? So slowest cpu that supports PCIe. But im pretty sure PCI to PCIe adapters exist right? So slowest cpu that supports PCI. Will that work?? Can you go even slower and older on the cpu than that? Is it possible to get a display from a 4090 using an 8086 microprocessor?

[GuiltySpark_]

Is this just theoretical? 

[aren332]

Just now, GuiltySpark_ said:

Is this just theoretical? 

yes

[freeagent]

I would imagine the first gen PCIE after AGP?

 

Edit:

 

Oooh shit, has to have UEFI right? Then scratch that

[aisle9]

I mean, technically, probably an LGA 775 Celeron, maybe even a Socket 478 Celeron, or AM2 single-core Sempron. Any motherboard with a PCIe x16 (physical) slot can install one.

 

The AM1 Semprons would also be a safe bet, as those AM1 boards did technically come with PCIe x16 slots that ran mechanically at x4, but I would assume even those painful little pieces of abject sadness outperformed the ancient Celerons and AM2 Semprons.

[freeagent]

Little pieces of sadness lol.. too funny 

[da na]

46 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

I mean, technically, probably an LGA 775 Celeron, maybe even a Socket 478 Celeron, or AM2 single-core Sempron. Any motherboard with a PCIe x16 (physical) slot can install one.

 

The AM1 Semprons would also be a safe bet, as those AM1 boards did technically come with PCIe x16 slots that ran mechanically at x4, but I would assume even those painful little pieces of abject sadness outperformed the ancient Celerons and AM2 Semprons.

That's getting close. But technically not the worst.

These three miserable little pieces of sand would be among the worst possible chips. Note they're slower than a 1600mhz laptop Athlon 64, that is the caliber of chips we are dealing with. That 2011 AMD APU would actually be the best of the worst pairings because it would have a higher number of PCIe lanes on a newer version - 2.0 if not 3.0, while the Atom and VIA only have PCIe 1.1/PCI to my knowledge.

 

Remember that, with cables, anything is possible.

With adapters, PCIe can be run over legacy PCI.

So that means it's practically limitless what a 4090 will plug into if you try hard enough. We're talking early 1990s hardware.

I've run a GeForce 9800 GTX+ over legacy PCI, it ran like hot ass and that's a high-end card from '09. Can only imagine how bad a 4090 would be.

[aisle9]

4 hours ago, da na said:

That's getting close. But technically not the worst.

These three miserable little pieces of sand would be among the worst possible chips. Note they're slower than a 1600mhz laptop Athlon 64, that is the caliber of chips we are dealing with. That 2011 AMD APU would actually be the best of the worst pairings because it would have a higher number of PCIe lanes on a newer version - 2.0 if not 3.0, while the Atom and VIA only have PCIe 1.1/PCI to my knowledge.

The VIA C7...there's a blast from the past. I don't think I've ever seen a VIA board with a PCIe slot, but I'm also not sure when the last time I saw a VIA-integrated board was.

[da na]

6 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

The VIA C7...there's a blast from the past. I don't think I've ever seen a VIA board with a PCIe slot, but I'm also not sure when the last time I saw a VIA-integrated board was.

The VIA board on my table is from a thin client, which utilizes USB WLAN due to lack of a PCI interface on that particular board.

VIA+CN700+North+Bridge+and+VIA+VT8237R+Plus+South+Bridge_datasheet_v120220.pdf (viaembedded.com)

However, CN700 chipset (most often paired with the C7) actually has support for a surprising number of PCI lanes (though its main interface is AGP 8x).

Though not natively PCIe, anything is possible with adapters......

 

The thin client that chip is from is one of the ones often promoted as an ultra cheap DOS gaming system; I bought one to hack in an IDE hard drive and run Windows 7 and 3D games. It did... well, awfully.

[Blue4130]

Like @freeagent said, It's going to need to be UEFI. That puts it at likely a Core 2 Solo U1300. Should be the bottom of the stack of the first UEFI based commercial motherboards. (Intel 945 based)

[freeagent]

My first UEFI based system was Z77

[da na]

24 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Like @freeagent said, It's going to need to be UEFI. That puts it at likely a Core 2 Solo U1300. Should be the bottom of the stack of the first UEFI based commercial motherboards. (Intel 945 based)

Don't count out low-power APUs that came later. There were some awful AMD Geode chips that fully supported UEFI and PCIe 2.0 that might be worse than a Core Solo... and don't forget Atom!