Ivy Bridge PCI-Express Scaling with HD 7970 and GTX 680 @ techPowerUp

With the advent of PCI Express 3.0 and Ivy Bridge some people are left wondering if PCIe3.0 is really something you must have or can you slowly move into it as you upgrade.

TechPowerUp has published a scaling article to discover just that

Today's latest graphics cards come with support for PCI-Express 3.0, which promises twice the bandwidth, while still being compatible with older motherboards and graphics cards. In our article we analyze differences in PCIe performance on Intel's Ivy Bridge with GeForce GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970, using 20 games at five resolutions, each at all three PCIe generations and x4, x8 and x16 link width.

When I created the Multi GPU Index I looked at similar things and tried to determine if a full 16x really mattered or if 8x would be enough.  The results were mixed but indicated that more is better but the technology update from 1.1 to 2.0 was the most important aspect.

Be sure to check out the vintange photo of an early DFI SLI enabled motherboard with the movable jumper blocks, brings back memories.

Related Web URL: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridg...