what is the minimum PCI-E connection needed for modern GPUs

[munchflo]

Hi LTT-Forum,

 

Im a long time viewer and recently got inspired by the "8Core under 150€"-video to also build a cheap gaming system with old server hardware.

I found that there are sometimes cheap dual lga1366 mainboards and many 4 core xeons for under 20€ each on ebay. So even better than Linus's video.

As GPU i wanted to buy a used hd7950 or hd7970 BUT there is one problem: the old xeon boards dont have a PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot, they only have a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot (some even with only 8x wired)

So my question is: what is the minimum PCI-E connection required for modern graphiscards?

Is PCI-E 2.0 x16 enough? (I think so)

Is PCI-E 2.0 x8 enough? (I dont know)

 

Btw if anyone is intrested: the specific board I found for cheap is a "Intel S5520HC" and I'll probably be using 2 "Xeon E5530" (4 Core, 2.4GHz, HT) with that.

Do you think I will get Win10 runnning with that or do I have to stick with Win 7?

 

Thanks!!

 

PS: I might do a build log if possible

[Bob Jim]

PCIe 2.0 16x is definitely enough, and I am fairly sure 8x is as well.

[Heesleemer]

PCIe2 16 is definately enough, since there is very little to no loss of video in PCIe3 8 

[Enderman]

2.0 4x is enough

but nvidia cards won't work in SLI unless they have 8X

 

i would go with 2.0 8x just to be safe

[manikyath]

honestly, i dont think under any scenario you'll find you'll run into issues, if its not an error in the game code. (like sending the entire texture catalog from ram to vram every frame)

 

both nvidia and amd have their limits tho, afaik they dont test for pcie generatio, but nvidia requires the card to be in at least an 8x slot, and amd in a 4x slot.

[chicksoup]

8x should work fine

 

Windows 10 will work

[Altecice]

AMD = PCI-E 2.0 X4 (Crossfire)

Nvidia = PCI-E 2.0 X8 (SLI)

[munchflo]

Thanks for all the fast answers!