Hello guys. first post here, I have Gigabyte P31-DS3L 775 motherboard which only supports PCI-E 1.1 slot. In this slot i have a ATI 4870 graphic card which has a 2.0 interface. Question is, am i losing that much from the GPU by using this motherboard? I plan on buying a whole new rig later on this year but would it worth buying a cheap new motherboard to get the most out of this graphic card? Thanks for any help
Here's how the whole bandwidth thing works... PCI-E 1.1 x16 is the equivalent of a PCI-E 2.0 x8 slot. Even with the latest graphics cards, x8 2.0 bandwidth (x16 1.1) is enough for any single card. If you were to have a 4870X2 on the other hand, an upgrade would be a good idea. So long as your processor isn't the bottleneck in your system, you won't notice much, if any improvement over your current board and processor.
Great answers, appreciate it. I have E8400 core duo and 4 Gigs of RAM (6400) so there shouldn't be any sort of bottle neck. (I think, only really have an amateur knowledge of this sort of thing.. I winged it really when I built my first system ) If I was thinking of an upgrade to my graphics card.. would a 5870 be viable on my set-up?
it would be faster, it would be cooler, and most of all, it would be an upgrade! (don't you love to open up your case to put something NEW in it?) but i think you wouldn't really notice a difference. the 4870 still eats everything you throw at it (i love this expression btw) alpaca
My old setup is an E8400 with 8GB of RAM, and it still ran every game I played just fine with my 4870 on a 30" monitor even. The graphics card was definitely holding me back in some games, but at a 30" resolution with a card going on two years old (and a 512MB version), I'd say I got my money's worth out of it. As for the upgrade, a 5870 would be viable, though if you're not gaming on a 24" monitor or larger you won't notice much difference.
