Legit Reviews

I've had the card in a pci-express 1.1 slot for almost a year now. I know both 2.0 and 1.1 card are backwards compatible but one offers 2x more bandwidth. Is the bandwidth between each slot a significant performance issue? My motherboard only has a PCI-E x16 slot, but if I bought a motherboard with a 2.0 slot, would I get better performance out of my GSO? Just wondering, because I'll be getting my GTS 250 here soon and was wondering if my mobo needed an upgrade as well to get the best possible performance out of either card.

A 16x PCIe 1.1 link speed will be plenty of bandwidth to run either card without bottleneck

Dan

Much <3 Dan

Dan, I bought a PNY GTS 250 for $110 off the egg with a free Resident Evil 5 Can't wait for the upgrade in a few days here!!!!!

Grats

It's a nice step up in performance.

Dan

Evasion wrote:Dan, I bought a PNY GTS 250 for $110 off the egg with a free Resident Evil 5 Can't wait for the upgrade in a few days here!!!!!

I have that same card, been no trouble for 4 months now!!!

Got it installed, runs perfectly in Bad Company 2 @ 1440x900;

As previously stated, a PCI-E x16 v1.1 will provide more than enough bandwidth. There are even reviews out of people testing the effect of lower speeds on the PCI-E slots, such as a GTX 480 running at x4. The difference between x16 v1.1 and x16 v2.0 is so extremely small it can't really be measured. Difference between x8 v1.1 and x16 v2.0 is pretty small is well, there may be a couple FPS drop in some cases, but nothing that warrants spending ~$30+ for a better motherboard or ~$100+ for a new motherboard. Contrary to popular belief, x4 isn't too much worse than x16 either, you'll definitely see a comparable difference if you looked at benchmarks, but the difference is far from huge.