Will my Graphics Card work with my motherboard?

[tatelee69]

Hello,

I'm building my first desktop ever after going from a Alienware m14x r1 (I know worst decision ever, I was young thought the lights were cool). I bought a MSI Gaming 970 motherboard AM3+ motherboard and bought a GTX 980 graphics card. The graphics card already arrived yesterday now waiting for the motherboard. I keep on reading on the MSI website that the Gaming 970 motherboard has 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16/x8, 1 x PCIe 2.0 x4/x8, 2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 or 2 x PCI. The GTX 980 says it requires Motherboard with free PCI Express slot and 6-pin + 8-pin Express supplementary power connector. I guess my question is did I completely screw myself in my choice of motherboard or will my GTX 980 work with the Gaming 970?

[Jack Kaye Pc Gamer]

It will work with it

[Digital_]

It should work just fine.

[typographie]

I'm sure as soon as I say this someone will find an exception, but generally speaking all a video card needs in a motherboard is a full-length PCIe slot. The supplementary power connectors come from your power supply.

 

PCIe is backward-compatible like USB, so PCIe 2.0 vs. PCIe 3.0 is of no concern.

[tatelee69]

Oh okay. I will be okay then? or do I know need to attach a connector to make it compatible? and since the Asus Strix GTX 980 uses PCI E 3.0 and the motherboard supports 2.0 is it not making the most out of the graphics or will it be using the graphics cards full potential no matter what?

[typographie]

13 minutes ago, tatelee69 said:

Oh okay. I will be okay then? or do I know need to attach a connector to make it compatible? and since the Asus Strix GTX 980 uses PCI E 3.0 and the motherboard supports 2.0 is it not making the most out of the graphics or will it be using the graphics cards full potential no matter what?

No adapter, the slot is physically identical.

 

Electrically, PCIe 2.0 has less bandwidth than PCIe 3.0. But since no video cards are really limited by 16 lanes of PCIe 2.0 you won't see any meaningful difference in performance.

 

Edit: Here's some data if you want it. They recorded about a 1 frame difference across the board between PCIe 2.0 x16 and PCIe 3.0 x16 using a GTX 980: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/pci_express_scaling_game_performance_analysis_review,7.html

[tatelee69]

Oh wow! that's nothing I thought the difference would be drastic that's really not relevant thank you for the help!