Motherboard and GPU compatibility

[danamb]

Hi All,

I ordered my PC and it is still in pre-production. I have been doing some research of the hardware and found that the Gigabyte AX370 Gaming 3 does not have PCIe3.0 connector that the GTX 1060 6GB requires, but the spec says "The PCIEX16 slot conforms to PCI Express 3.0 standard.". As I am not expert in this, could you tell me if this means the motherboard is fully compatible with the GPU and there will be no problem with the performance, or shall I change it to something else while I can?

Motherboard spec:
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-AX370-Gaming-3-rev-1x#sp

GPU spec:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/10series/geforce-gtx-1060/

Thanks!

 

[SpyderTracks]

Hi All,

I ordered my PC and it is still in pre-production. I have been doing some research of the hardware and found that the Gigabyte AX370 Gaming 3 does not have PCIe3.0 connector that the GTX 1060 6GB requires, but the spec says "The PCIEX16 slot conforms to PCI Express 3.0 standard.". As I am not expert in this, could you tell me if this means the motherboard is fully compatible with the GPU and there will be no problem with the performance, or shall I change it to something else while I can?

Motherboard spec:
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-AX370-Gaming-3-rev-1x#sp

GPU spec:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/10series/geforce-gtx-1060/

Thanks!

All motherboards these days are PCIE 3, no need to worry.

 

[Rob574188]

Hi OP,

As SpyderTracks has said, everything we offer is PCIe 3 nowadays and we do try to carefully match our configurators to only allow compatible components to be purchased from us or warn you otherwise. Besides this, the worst case scenario is that something slips through the net and we let you know during production/testing but this would be a very rare scenario due to the extensive compatibility checking we perform before we make components available for sale.

 

[danamb]

Thank you for both answers!

My main concern was just the possible performance-lost that might happen, if the GPU can be used on the motherboard but with certain limitations. But if there is nothing to be worry about then I will not worry about this.

 

[Oussebon]

1) As above, pretty well every mobo these days will have PCIe 3.0.

2) The manufacturer website specifies x16 is 3.0:

1.1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
* Actual support may vary by CPU.
(The PCIEX16 slot conforms to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-AX370-Gaming-3-rev-1x#sp

This is pretty explicit.


3) The difference anyway, at least for gaming, is inconsequential:
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2488-pci-e-3-x8-vs-x16-performance-impact-on-gpus
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=pcie-gpu-123&num=3
https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/pci-express-3-0-vs-2-0-gaming-performance-gain/5/

PCIe 2.0 x16 is the same bandwidth as PCIe 3.0 x8, as far as my very limited understanding of PCIe goes, and there are huge numbers of benchmarks showing it makes barely the tiniest drop of difference for gaming.

But that doesn't matter as your 1060 will get the full 3.0 x16 anyway.

There is therefore nothing to worry about, on any count