When Will AMD Motherboards Use PCI Express 3

[Lachlanmarks96]

I was just wondering when PCIE 3 will be coming to AMD motherboards?

I really want to get behind AMD but I'm not sure if not having PCIE 3 is a deal breaker.

Will PCIE 3 make a difference now and in the future for gaming with a 7970?

Thanks :)

[Ezekiel_Enus]

At CES Asus announced the new AM3+ Sabertooth board which I believe is the first one that will implement PCI-E 3.0. As for the future, it will really make no difference with a single card in a 16x 3.0 or 2.0 unless your really concerned about benchmarks.

The Major difference is found when running SLI or Crossfire as usually the lanes are then restricted to 8x. In the case of PCI-E 2.0 this would cause a little dip in performance if the cards were running maxed out but, with PCI-E 3.0 the bandwidth is double that of 2.0 and an 8x 3.0 lane has the bandwidth of a 16x 2.0 lane meaning there is no performance drop.

[Bramm17]

Noting officially from AMD, but as Ezekiel mentioned Asus had some AM3+ board(s) with PCI-E 3.0.... The difference is in bandwith but you will not see it in gaming, the difference is so little.... Maybe in the future but by that time prob all AMD stuff will be PCI-E 3.0

[Wats]

This is a good thread. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't PCI-E 3.0 an Intel invention?

[zephiK]

Having a motherboard with PCI-E 3.0 support is more future proof but as of right now they're backwards compatible and not much benefits are there from using a PCI-E 3.0 in a PCI-E 2.0 socket.

You can read more in depth here, http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/...ance_review/14 (Read Conclusion for the TL;DR)

[Art Vandelay]

PCIe 3.0 does not make a difference from PCIe 2.0 with modern graphics cards, unless you are running 4x SLI on an 1155 platform.

[amintha1992]

ASUS do have a PCIe 3.0 AMD motherboard. but interms of gaming on a single card. there is not performance differences in any tangible manner. but if you are going to be doing quard-sli or quard-crossfire then PCIe 3.0 will come in to play. but if you are talking about gamin. that is not yet relevant. it doesnt matter if you have PCIe 3.0 or not. because you will run in to other bottlenecks way before you will be PCIe bandwidth limited.

[Emkryan]

ASUS has PCIE 3.0 on some AMD boards but that's about it

[Fordox]

It will take some time.

there is speculation that AMD won't even place controllers in their new upcomming 1090fx chipset (if it comes out in that name).

but is it really needed? i don't think so.

[FeuerToifel]

asus new am3+ sabertooth motherboard has pci-e gen3, but only the graphicscards can use it. so it only makes sense when using crossfire or sli. comunication between the cpu and the gpu(s) is still over pci-e gen2

[Glenwing]

This is a good thread. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't PCI-E 3.0 an Intel invention?

The PCI standard is specified by the PCI-SIG, which consists of many companies. It is chaired by IBM, and Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA are among the board of directors.