Performance difference between pci-e x16 and 2.0 x16

[antowan]

What would be the performance knock when putting a pci-e 2.0 x16 card into a normal x16 pci-e slot?

 

[Conradl]

None.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

None.

Really! Please explain why there is no performance degrade?

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express


Capacity Per lane:

* v1.x: 250 MB/s
* v2.0: 500 MB/s
* v3.0: 1 GB/s

16 lane slot:

* v1.x: 4 GB/s
* v2.0: 8 GB/s
* v3.0: 16 GB/s

 

[Conradl]

Really! Please explain why there is no performance degrade?

AFAIK most cards do not meet or exceed the capacity of the PCI bus, so increasing (or decreasing) the logical upper bus speed will have no significant impact.

 

[antowan]

Interesting. Thanks for the answers so far. Is this clear cut though? Would it make sense to buy a R2000 or so card for a mobo that can only do x16....?

 

[chickenbeef]

Dual GPU cards will perform best on a 2.0 slot, i.e. 4870x2, 9800GX2, GTX295 etc

 

[Conradl]

Very interesting article....