GPU Upgrade (What can I run with what I've got?)

[BaldEagl]

Here is a comparison of different pci-e bus speeds and games.

FSX being the exception there's no difference between running pci-e 1.0 x16 or 2.0 x16

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-2.0,1915-10.html

and this is only because FSX overflows the internal vram. So basically it crawls with any card because of this.

So for AH2 and majority of other current games it makes no difference whether you run x1.0 or x2.0 capable vcard / motherboard. So in conclusion having 2.0 is beneficial but it is in no way a requirement nor does lack of it hinder performance with any other game probably except fsx.

The only problem with that is that it's from 2008, about the time of the introduction of 2.0.  I've been looking for more updated information and can't find any.  All of the tests and benchmarks I can find are from 2008 to early 2009 which was during the transition period.

While I admittedly made a mistake above, the internal RAM speed will make a difference over what he's currently running and the comparison of the lower end cards from the eVGA web-site clearly shows an advantage for 2.0.

I wish someone would benchmark current higher end cards using both slots.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The 9800Gx2 that was used is still close to high-end single cards in performance. The flaw in your logic was to confuse pci-e lane function with memory bandwith. As long as things function as planned, a display card uses only internal memory for operation. If that memory is saturated, performance collapses regardless of pci-e rating. In AH2 this can be seen in effect by selecting too large a shadow buffer. Above a certain limit your performance is just devastated because your display card is streaming i/o through pci-e  to system ram instead of internal memory.

The difference you saw in those low-end cards is most likely a typo or the cards are really based on different internal architecture (read: the performance benefit is not related to streaming data through pci-e 2.0 x16).

So while PCI-E 2.0 is not bad by any means, it's just fundamentally wrong to say someone NEEDS it while using a mid-level current card or even high-end single gpu card. So relax folks, world will not turn if you plug a new 2.0 card to an older 1.0 x16 motherboard or vice versa. No need to burn cash over nothing. That is, unless you happen to play FSX on hardcore settings like chalenge.