PCI-E 2.0 Maximum GPU and GPU Upgrade.

[Whoopsie988]

I wasn't sure whether to put this on the 'GPU' thread or 'CPU, Motherboards and Memory' thread but I decided to put it on this one in the end.

 

I have an i5-2400 PC with 8GB of RAM and an R7 250 1GB (GDDR5). The only current bottleneck of the system is the GPU and I was wondering what upgrade path I should go considering the motherboard only has a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot.

 

I know that all PCI-E 3.0 cards are backwards compatible and I have done some research and everything points towards there not being a huge differene between PCI-E 2.0 and 3.0 performance, although I have been told that HBM cards suffer losses on PCI-E 2.0 as they need all the bandwidth they can get. I do want to be able to game comfortably at 1080p but I don't want to spend too much and I also only have a 430W PSU so a card like the 1050Ti seems like a good option.

 

I was also curious as to what the maximum card with similar if not identical performance on PCI-E 2.0 as on PCI-E 3.0 would be.

 

Any responses/help would be greatly appreciated.

[-rascal-]

13 minutes ago, Whoopsie988 said:

I wasn't sure whether to put this on the 'GPU' thread or 'CPU, Motherboards and Memory' thread but I decided to put it on this one in the end.

 

I have an i5-2400 PC with 8GB of RAM and an R7 250 1GB (GDDR5). The only current bottleneck of the system is the GPU and I was wondering what upgrade path I should go considering the motherboard only has a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot.

 

I know that all PCI-E 3.0 cards are backwards compatible and I have done some research and everything points towards there not being a huge differene between PCI-E 2.0 and 3.0 performance, although I have been told that HBM cards suffer losses on PCI-E 2.0 as they need all the bandwidth they can get. I do want to be able to game comfortably at 1080p but I don't want to spend too much and I also only have a 430W PSU so a card like the 1050Ti seems like a good option.

 

I was also curious as to what the maximum card with similar if not identical performance on PCI-E 2.0 as on PCI-E 3.0 would be.

 

Any responses/help would be greatly appreciated.

 

That HBM PCI-Express bandwidth "myth" is completely false.

I've run my R9-Fury's in PCI-E 2.0 and 3.0 slots -- no issue.

The GPUs communicate through the PCI-Express bus in Crossfire, but that should not be a problem.

 

You start to see performance loss when you step into the PCI-E 1.x, or PCI-E X4 2.0 (maybe PCI-E X8 2.0...or PCI-E X3 4.0).

The performance hit will apply to most high-end GPUs, and not JUST the cards using HBM technology.

 

PCI-Express slot bandwidth is not going to be the bottleneck -- your slowly aging i5-2400 will be the limiting factor.

 

Allocate $40 ~ $60 from your GPU budget for a 500W - 550W power supply, and you are set for virtually ANY single GPU out there.

In that regards, WHICH "430W PSU" do you have??

 

You will eventually upgrade your CPU...within the next decade.

I don't see the reason why you have to limit yourself because of your power supply, and PCI-E slot bandwidth...

 

Set a budget, and grab the higher performing card you can purchase.

That said, given you are gaming at 1080p, as of Q1 2017, these would be the best for high/ultra detail 1080p and/or 1440p gaming (in no particular order):

• GTX 1060 3GB
• GTX 1060 6GB  **The 3GB and 6GB are DIFFERNET; not just VRAM size. 6GB having more CUDA cores **
• RX-480 4GB / 8GB
• RX-470 4GB / 8GB

[Droidbot]

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/pci-express-3-0-vs-2-0-gaming-performance-gain/3/

 

this is with a 980ti

 

480 4gb > 1060 3gb > 470 4gb > 1050Ti 4gb

they should be fine with a 2400. 

 

update your BIOS and get a cheap 2600/2700/3570/3770 or similar

[-rascal-]

Like the article @Droidbot posted...PCI-Express scaling for the GTX 1080.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_PCI_Express_Scaling/

 

EIDT:

What do you know...PCI-Express scaling for R9-Fury X as well...

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X_PCI-Express_Scaling/

[Whoopsie988]

2 minutes ago, -rascal- said:

 

That HBM PCI-Express bandwidth "myth" is completely false.

I've ran my R9-Fury's in PCI-E 2.0 and 3.0 slots -- no issue.

 

PCI-Express slot bandwidth is not going to be the bottleneck -- your slowly aging i5-2400 will be the limiting factor.

 

Allocate $40 ~ $60 from your GPU budget for a 500W - 550W power supply, and you are set for virtually ANY single GPU out there.

In that regards, WHICH "430W PSU" do you have??

 

You will eventually upgrade your CPU...within the next decade.

I don't see the reason why you have to limit yourself because of your power supply, and PCI-E slot bandwidth...

 

Set a budget, and grab the higher performing card you can purchase.

That said, given you are gaming at 1080p, as of Q1 2017, these would be the best for high/ultra detail 1080p and/or 1440p gaming (in no particular order):

• GTX 1060 3GB
• GTX 1060 6GB  **The 3GB and 6GB are DIFFERNET; not just VRAM size. 6GB having more CUDA cores **
• RX-480 4GB / 8GB
• RX-470 4GB / 8GB

Awesime, thanks. I live in Australia so PC parts a stupid high. Hopefully the Australian dollar will rise soon. The Thermaltake SMART 550W 80+ Bronze PSU is $85 so I'll look into that. I do plan on building a new PC, maybe with a 6C/12T Ryzen CPU, depending on price and Ryzen's actual performance but I'll have to make do with what I've got for now. I do have to admit that I am a bit of an AMD fanboy so I would love to get a 470 or 480. The 470 looks good as it isn't far behind the 480 and can be upwards of $50-$60 less on average.

[Whoopsie988]

2 minutes ago, -rascal- said:

Like the article @Droidbot posted...PCI-Express scaling for the GTX 1080.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_PCI_Express_Scaling/

 

EIDT:

What do you know...PCI-Express scaling for R9-Fury X as well...

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X_PCI-Express_Scaling/

Wow, there isn't much of a difference at all. That's pretty surprising when you look at the theoretical performance increases between 2.0 and 3.0.

[Whoopsie988]

8 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/pci-express-3-0-vs-2-0-gaming-performance-gain/3/

 

this is with a 980ti

 

480 4gb > 1060 3gb > 470 4gb > 1050Ti 4gb

they should be fine with a 2400. 

 

update your BIOS and get a cheap 2600/2700/3570/3770 or similar

Wow, I'm surprised. You'd think that modern GPUs (especially a high powered one like the 980Ti) would take more advantage of PCI-E 3.0.

[-rascal-]

14 minutes ago, Whoopsie988 said:

Awesime, thanks. I live in Australia so PC parts a stupid high. Hopefully the Australian dollar will rise soon. The Thermaltake SMART 550W 80+ Bronze PSU is $85 so I'll look into that. I do plan on building a new PC, maybe with a 6C/12T Ryzen CPU, depending on price and Ryzen's actual performance but I'll have to make do with what I've got for now. I do have to admit that I am a bit of an AMD fanboy so I would love to get a 470 or 480. The 470 looks good as it isn't far behind the 480 and can be upwards of $50-$60 less on average.

Oh, I know the USD currency conversion feel.

The exchange rate for my Canadian Pesos is similar to the Australian Dollar.

$1.00 CDN = 1.002 AUD.

 

At $85...I'd look at the Corsair CX 500 V3 instead of the Thermaltake.

Thermaltake is known for much lower quality PSU's...until you get into their high-end units.

https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/qrH48d/corsair-power-supply-cmpsu500cxv3

 

The GTX 1050 Ti is not worth the price, especially if the PSU no longer becomes a limit. The RX-470 is significantly faster, for the extra cost.

 

There is a HIS IceQ X2 RX-470 4GB going for $279.00 AUD.

BUT there is a Gigabyte GTX 1060 3GB on sale right now for $288.00.

Then there is also a ASUS GTX 1060 3GB for $1.00 AUD more ($289.00).

But a XFX RX-480 for $299.99.

Depends on your budget limit.

 

RX-470: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/VwgPxr/his-radeon-rx-470-4gb-iceq-x2-oc-video-card-hs-470r4lcnr

Gigabyte GTX 1060: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/7bL7YJ/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-1060-3gb-windforce-oc-video-card-gv-n1060wf2oc-3gd

ASUS GTX 1060: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/Kh38TW/asus-geforce-gtx-1060-3gb-dual-video-card-dual-gtx1060-o3g

XFX RX-480: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/sx98TW/xfx-radeon-rx-480-4gb-rs-video-card-rx-480p4lfb6

[Whoopsie988]

4 minutes ago, -rascal- said:

Oh, I know the USD currency conversion feel.

The exchange rate for my Canadian Pesos is similar to the Australian Dollar.

$1.00 CDN = 1.002 AUD.

 

At $85...I'd look at the Corsair CX 500 V3 instead of the Thermaltake.

Thermaltake is known for much lower quality PSU's...until you get into their high-end units.

https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/qrH48d/corsair-power-supply-cmpsu500cxv3

 

The GTX 1050 Ti is not worth the price, especially if the PSU no longer becomes a limit. The RX-470 is significantly faster, for the extra cost.

 

There is a HIS IceQ X2 RX-470 4GB going for $279.00 AUD.

BUT there is a Gigabyte GTX 1060 3GB on sale right now for $288.00.

Then there is also a ASUS GTX 1060 3GB for $1.00 AUD more ($289.00).

But a XFX RX-480 for $299.99.

Depends on your budget limit.

 

RX-470: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/VwgPxr/his-radeon-rx-470-4gb-iceq-x2-oc-video-card-hs-470r4lcnr

Gigabyte GTX 1060: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/7bL7YJ/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-1060-3gb-windforce-oc-video-card-gv-n1060wf2oc-3gd

ASUS GTX 1060: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/Kh38TW/asus-geforce-gtx-1060-3gb-dual-video-card-dual-gtx1060-o3g

XFX RX-480: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/sx98TW/xfx-radeon-rx-480-4gb-rs-video-card-rx-480p4lfb6

An RX 480 would be good. Drivers have really improved it, it's now something like 1% slower accross the board and it should age well with the whole AMD 'Finewine' thing. I'm also a bit of an AMD fanboy.

[Droidbot]

24 minutes ago, Whoopsie988 said:

An RX 480 would be good. Drivers have really improved it, it's now something like 1% slower accross the board and it should age well with the whole AMD 'Finewine' thing. I'm also a bit of an AMD fanboy.

1060 6Gb is 4.5 tflops

480 8gb is 5.5 tflops

 

AMD still has room to improve that lead

[Whoopsie988]

1 minute ago, Droidbot said:

1060 6Gb is 4.5 tflops

480 8gb is 5.5 tflops

 

AMD still has room to improve that lead

I expect them to. They seem quite a bit more 'devoted' to driver improvements on older cards. You can still play games on older cards like the HD 6870 and that's a 2TFLOP card.

[ybriK]

Of course there won't be difference because a GPU isn't like a PCI-e storage where they transfer gigabytes per second of information. All the PCI-e on the graphics card does is transfer the information of the graphics card to the CPU so that they can communicate which is probably like a couple of megabytes at most. And other things like Power Requirements and Clock Frequencies. This is regards to 2.0 and 3.0 revisions of PCIe x16.

[Droidbot]

3 minutes ago, ybriK said:

Of course there won't be difference because a GPU isn't like a PCI-e storage where they transfer gigabytes per second of information. All the PCI-e on the graphics card does is transfer the information of the graphics card to the CPU so that they can communicate which is probably like a couple of megabytes at most. And other things like Power Requirements and Clock Frequencies.

Think about stuff being loaded to and from VRAM. In open-world games, where the entire map isn't loaded at the start and textures differ, the CPU will be unloading and loading stuff into and from VRAM. 

That's where PCI-E matters. Bottleneck a card on PCI-E x1 2.0 and see the frame drops in most games. (not that much, but still, my point stands)

[Prysin]

1 hour ago, Whoopsie988 said:

I wasn't sure whether to put this on the 'GPU' thread or 'CPU, Motherboards and Memory' thread but I decided to put it on this one in the end.

 

I have an i5-2400 PC with 8GB of RAM and an R7 250 1GB (GDDR5). The only current bottleneck of the system is the GPU and I was wondering what upgrade path I should go considering the motherboard only has a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot.

 

I know that all PCI-E 3.0 cards are backwards compatible and I have done some research and everything points towards there not being a huge differene between PCI-E 2.0 and 3.0 performance, although I have been told that HBM cards suffer losses on PCI-E 2.0 as they need all the bandwidth they can get. I do want to be able to game comfortably at 1080p but I don't want to spend too much and I also only have a 430W PSU so a card like the 1050Ti seems like a good option.

 

I was also curious as to what the maximum card with similar if not identical performance on PCI-E 2.0 as on PCI-E 3.0 would be.

 

Any responses/help would be greatly appreciated.

there is 3% difference between PCIe 2.0 x8 and PCIe 3.0 x16... Tests was done by TechPowerUp with both a Fury X and GTX 1080. If those cards see no big drop in performance, neither will you.

 

LINKS:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X_PCI-Express_Scaling/

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_PCI_Express_Scaling/

[Prysin]

38 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

Think about stuff being loaded to and from VRAM. In open-world games, where the entire map isn't loaded at the start and textures differ, the CPU will be unloading and loading stuff into and from VRAM. 

That's where PCI-E matters. Bottleneck a card on PCI-E x1 2.0 and see the frame drops in most games. (not that much, but still, my point stands)

Not really big of a deal which you run. No modern GPU will run below x4 lanes from what i know, drivers usually throw a hissy fit at that point. See my previous post for MORE evidence.

 

GTX 1080

 

[Droidbot]

1 minute ago, Prysin said:

Not really big of a deal which you run. No modern GPU will run below x4 lanes from what i know, drivers usually throw a hissy fit at that point. See my previous post for MORE evidence.

 

GTX 1080

 

Through Expresscard, which manages to negotiate a PCI-E x1 2.0 link with compression via Optimus or just standard on AMD cards, you can negotiate an x1 link.

Drivers don't flip their shit either, which is cool. 

 

[DragonTamer1]

I noticed that my 2500K at 4.2GHz was bottle-necking my 480 in certain titles and in some games (namely GTA) was so bad that I would have to stop moving and wait for textures to load in.

 

If you are pairing a GPU with the 2400 then I would recommend something like a 1050ti or an RX 470. On the used side consider a GTX 960 or 970 (though the 970 would be the maximum I would recommend).

[Prysin]

2 hours ago, DragonTamer1 said:

I noticed that my 2500K at 4.2GHz was bottle-necking my 480 in certain titles and in some games (namely GTA) was so bad that I would have to stop moving and wait for textures to load in.

 

If you are pairing a GPU with the 2400 then I would recommend something like a 1050ti or an RX 470. On the used side consider a GTX 960 or 970 (though the 970 would be the maximum I would recommend).

as for your 2500k. Try getting faster RAM. something like 2133MHz DDR3. It helps in CPU related bottlenecks. 

For proof, just google "Digital Foundry Faster RAM 2500k"... it had a big impact in their benches.

[ybriK]

2 hours ago, Prysin said:

as for your 2500k. Try getting faster RAM. something like 2133MHz DDR3. It helps in CPU related bottlenecks. 

For proof, just google "Digital Foundry Faster RAM 2500k"... it had a big impact in their benches.

Hmm maybe I should OC my 1600MHz to 2133MHz, I wonder if my i7-2700K will benefit considering I have a pretty beefy GPU and CPU Usage does skyrocket in very demanding titles.