PCIE2.0 will a GTX960/970 still run in it

[Madmonsta]

i'm in the slow (as i get the money) process of updating my rig 

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/303717-old-heart-new-body-1st-build/ 

 

i've had a small windfall and am thinking of upgrading my graphics card - an ASUS GT630.

 

while i'm keen to get the GTX960, which i can get  right now, or wait (and save for a couple of weeks) and get a GTX970.

 

my concern is if either will still run in a pcie2.0 x16 slot??

 

i'm thinking either should run, just with a lot of throttle, but still better than my GT630.

 

as per the build log, i'm looking to upgrade the mobo, cpu, & ram in the not to distant future, but am hoping the graphics card will be a significant bang for the buck performance boost in the current system :-))))

 

would appreciate your input/guidance  :-)))))

[TheKDub]

Get the 970, yes it will run in a pcie 2.0 x16 slot, it is essentially the same as a pcie 3.0 x8 slot.

[Fate]

Yes but your E8400 will bottleneck it.

[theloveablemoose]

i'm in the slow (as i get the money) process of updating my rig 

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/303717-old-heart-new-body-1st-build/ 

 

i've had a small windfall and am thinking of upgrading my graphics card - an ASUS GT630.

 

while i'm keen to get the GTX960, which i can get  right now, or wait (and save for a couple of weeks) and get a GTX970.

 

my concern is if either will still run in a pcie2.0 x16 slot??

 

i'm thinking either should run, just with a lot of throttle, but still better than my GT630.

 

as per the build log, i'm looking to upgrade the mobo, cpu, & ram in the not to distant future, but am hoping the graphics card will be a significant bang for the buck performance boost in the current system :-))))

 

would appreciate your input/guidance  :-)))))

Yeah it's backwards compatible.

[EcoBoost]

while i'm keen to get the GTX960, which i can get  right now, or wait (and save for a couple of weeks) and get a GTX970.

Why not R9 280/290...

[Madmonsta]

Yes but your E8400 will bottleneck it

given the vintage of the cpu, mobo, and ram i certainly expect a bottleneck, but i can live with it for the moment.....tick....tock :-))

[Madmonsta]

Why not R9 280/290...

there are those that bat for the red team, i bat for the green, and i hear a lot about the amd's running hot and noisey, so i'm a bit put off by them

[aeterna789]

My suggestion is just keep saving up and buy everything in one go. If you can't wait, then the 970 is the best price-to-performance choice for a GPU.

[SteveGrabowski]

A 970 works great in a PCIE-2.0x16 slot. I run one myself, and the difference between 2.0 and 3.0 is no more than 2% max. If you check the LTT 3DMark thread I just posted a score yesterday with a 12300 Firestrike graphics score for a mildly overclocked 970 on a PCIE-2.0 board.

[EarthboundHero]

there are those that bat for the red team, i bat for the green, and i hear a lot about the amd's running hot and noisey, so i'm a bit put off by them

If you're going to get a 960, don't. The 280 is much better. I have one, the noise depends on the one you get and it's not that hot. I get mine to run <70 with 40-50% fan speed. Though if you're getting a 970 then there's not much better for the price.

[JoaoPRSousa]

With the money of the GPU I would rather get a motherboard and a CPU.

[SteveGrabowski]

Still, I think buying a GTX 970 now to pair with an E8400 is a terrible idea. The bottleneck was enormous when I ran my 970 with an overclocked 4.2GHz Pentium G3258. No new game other than Bioshock Infinite ran very well with my 970 even with that big overclock, just tons of oscillation in framerate and GPU usage near 60% most of the time, with drops to 30%-40% regularly. Old Call of Duty games optimized for Core2 Duos ran great, but anything new just sucked. And it will be way worse with an E8400, since it runs at a 30% lower clockspeed than my G3258 OC with maybe 60% lower IPC. So since instructions per second is IPC times clockspeed, you can see the E8400 is going to feed the 970 much much worse than even my lowly G3258 did.

 

I'd say save your money and buy a new GPU when you have the money for a new CPU+board. If we're talking a few months before you get the new CPU+board, a GTX 970 at $350 probably won't be a good buy by then. And you're not getting GTX 970 performance anyways in that time between getting the 970 and getting the i5+board you'd need to run it properly. There is no way around that CPU bottleneck other than turning down settings and running at 30FPS, and by then you're running games at the level a $100 R7 260x could easily keep up with.

 

If you do want to build a piece at a time though, I'd advise taking that money you would have spent on the GTX 970 now and putting it into an i5+board instead, as CPUs hold value way better than GPUs do. At $350 you could even go high end with an i5-4690k + Z97 board combo. Or you could save a few bucks and go with an i5-4590 + H97 board combo for about $260. Then in a few months get that GPU you really want. Maybe something better than the 970 is out at that price by then. Hell, maybe the 980 even drops into your price range if AMD can exert a lot of pressure on Nvidia with the R9 300 series.

[Madmonsta]

Still, I think buying a GTX 970 now to pair with an E8400 is a terrible idea. The bottleneck was enormous when I ran my 970 with an overclocked 4.2GHz Pentium G3258. No new game other than Bioshock Infinite ran very well with my 970 even with that big overclock,

 

i dont play any AAA games that you usually associate with benchmarking, i only play World of Warcraft, and would love my fps not to nose-dive when in a large raid group.

[Fate]

 and would love my fps not to nose-dive when in a large raid group.

Need a new CPU and GPU m8, I'd recommend a i3, H81 motherboard, and R9 270 for WoW. 

[SteveGrabowski]

i dont play any AAA games that you usually associate with benchmarking, i only play World of Warcraft, and would love my fps not to nose-dive when in a large raid group.

 

I don't play WOW so I can't tell you first hand, but people tell me it's optimized for dual core. In which case a Pentium G3258 would be a massive upgrade that you could do cheaply, and then you could spend the rest on a video card. I didn't see you were in Aus at first. Here is a more balanced combo for just a little more than a GTX 970:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($89.00 @ CPL Online) 

Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($59.00 @ Umart) 

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($92.00 @ IJK) 

Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card  ($299.00 @ CPL Online) 

Total: $539.00

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-02-13 05:33 EST+1100

[SteveGrabowski]

Crap, maybe WOW isn't dual core anymore, as Warlords of Dreanor recommends a quadcore.

 

http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/09/24/blizzard-releases-system-requirements-for-warlords-of-draenor/

 

I'd probably go AMD if I was you, something like an FX-4300 or FX-6300.

[GodSpoon]

Long story short, yes you can run a 970 in 2.0 16x, but you might want to consider upgrading that CPU as its gonna slow it down a good deal-far more than a slightly slower pci-e slot

[Madmonsta]

Well thanks all - especially Stevegrabowski - you've rained on my excited impulse buying parade, but i'm far from unhappy :-)) i've had a good mull over the comments and i'm going to go with the 'no instant access' money box plan, and go the mobo, cpu, ram option. if the E8400 is a serial bottlenecker maybe i can squeeze some extra juice out of my GT630 if i upgrade these first and put the gpu on the to do list after that. maybe treat myself by xmas lol :-)))

 

thankyou all for your input, much appreciated :-))))))))

[SteveGrabowski]

Well thanks all - especially Stevegrabowski - you've rained on my excited impulse buying parade, but i'm far from unhappy :-)) i've had a good mull over the comments and i'm going to go with the 'no instant access' money box plan, and go the mobo, cpu, ram option. if the E8400 is a serial bottlenecker maybe i can squeeze some extra juice out of my GT630 if i upgrade these first and put the gpu on the to do list after that. maybe treat myself by xmas lol :-)))

 

thankyou all for your input, much appreciated :-))))))))

 

Haha... Wow, I can't believe the FX-6300 and FX-4300 are basically the same price on au.pcpartpicker. Considering the recommended GPU is a GTX 470, I don't think you'd need to go all the way to the GTX 970 level to get a great gaming experience anyways.