New graphics card to old motherboard?

[Bizman]

Hi, I've been planning to change my trusted HD 3870 to a newer one for quite some time. Since minor improvements only make one unhappy and poor, I've been waiting for the price of HD 5850 to drop into a reasonable level. Today I found out, that there's a new series, the HD 6850 and 6870, which should perform even a little better at a cheaper price. Not bad!

Then I noticed, that they were specified as PCI-e rev. 2.1 cards. I'm afraid my Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3 only has a PCI-e rev. 1 slot.

Now the question is, would the 6850 boost my frame rates with all goodies a lot on my current mobo? And if so, would I see another leap changing the mobo in the future?

[columbus]

PCI-e 2.0 are backwards compatible with PCI-e 1.0 slots should be no issues

[Tigger29]

Yes, while using a 2.1 card in a 1.0 slot can reduce it's full potential, it should still work, and it should still run loops around your 3870!

Make sure you check into your power supply... make sure it's strong enough to handle a new card.  Anything less than 600 watts or so these days is pretty much too low for a high-performance video card.

[Krusty]

How much RAM have you got, what OS are you using (64 bit?) and what CPU do you have?

The 6800 line is a significant jump over the 3800 line. Just upgrading a video card won't always help. It really depends on a picture of the system as a whole.

On a PCIE 1.0 slot that card may function severely reduced or it may not function at all (theoretically it will, but realistically schtuff happens). You may spend hundreds of dollars for no real benefit. Helps to lay out the specs of your computer system in requests like this.

[Tigger29]

Krusty have you ever personally ran into a PCIe2 card that performed very poorly due to being in a PCIe1 slot?

I used to run a PCIe2 card in a PCIe1 slot that wasn't even X16.. it was only X4... and it still ran circles over the old video card.

Yes, you are correct in the assumption that if the rest of his hardware is ancient, then he may be limited by that.. but realistically having a shiny new graphics card will probably instill the 'upgrade bug' into his head and the rest will follow anyway...

[Krusty]

I'm currently running on an x4 slot myself, and have looked a number of benchmarks here and there, and all I can say is that if you're doing something backwards compatible like this, you never know what kind of issues may pop up (hence the theoretical/realistic differentiation I made).

[skribetm]

assuming your pcie1.0 slot operates at x16(4GB/s), it would still be twice faster than pcie2.0x4(2GB/s).
pcie1.0/pcie2.0 (x16, x8, x4) wont make any difference at all when it comes to performance.
tests/benchmarks are here: >xs

so as long as the card fits the slot and you have ample power, go ahead and splurge on a new GPU. 

[Chalenge]

It will be fine. There is not a single video card on the market that approaches the limits of PCIe v1.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Hi, I've been planning to change my trusted HD 3870 to a newer one for quite some time. Since minor improvements only make one unhappy and poor, I've been waiting for the price of HD 5850 to drop into a reasonable level. Today I found out, that there's a new series, the HD 6850 and 6870, which should perform even a little better at a cheaper price. Not bad!

Then I noticed, that they were specified as PCI-e rev. 2.1 cards. I'm afraid my Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3 only has a PCI-e rev. 1 slot.

Now the question is, would the 6850 boost my frame rates with all goodies a lot on my current mobo? And if so, would I see another leap changing the mobo in the future?

Moro Bizman!

I'm running the 5850 in that same mobo and it's performing fine. Don't worry about it.

[Bizman]

  and thank you all for your help. I already knew it would be downwards compatible, and I have already installed a 700W PSU.

CPU wise I think my Intel Core2 Duo E6750 is capable enough for playing AH for the next couple of years. The 2*2 Gb of DDR2 RAM is the most that XP 32 bit can handle.

So it's starting to sound like Santa is likely to give me a new graphics card this year 

[1Boner]

Make sure you check into your power supply... make sure it's strong enough to handle a new card.  Anything less than 600 watts or so these days is pretty much too low for a high-performance video card.

I'm running a ATI 5870 with 525 watts, its working great.