PCIE 2.0 question

Hey guys. I'm building a new rig and so far the parts I have lined up are as follows:

Mobo: MSI P35 Neo-FR LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX

Video Card: VisionTek 900244 Radeon HD 4870 512 MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCIE 2.0 x16

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4mb l2 cache

Memory: Corsair 4gb (2x2gb) 240 pin DDR2 SDRam DDR2 800 (PC2 6400 Dual Channel

Case: Antec 900 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

PS: OCZ GameXStream OCZ600GXSSLI 600W ATX12V

I have 2 questions. the first being what do you guys think of the setup? I want a rig that will make Crysis pretty and run Far Cry 2 well also.

Also, How does PCIE 2.0 work? I noticed the MSI board that I have chosen doesn't list a PCIE 2.0 x 16 slot on it's specifications. Just one PCIE x16 slot. I also realize that the 4870 is designed for PCIE 2.0. Do I need to pick out a mobo that is specifically designed to accept PCIE 2.0 cards? Is there that much of a performance difference?

Hey guys. I'm building a new rig and so far the parts I have lined up are as follows:

Mobo: MSI P35 Neo-FR LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX

Video Card: VisionTek 900244 Radeon HD 4870 512 MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCIE 2.0 x16

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4mb l2 cache

Memory: Corsair 4gb (2x2gb) 240 pin DDR2 SDRam DDR2 800 (PC2 6400 Dual Channel

Case: Antec 900 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

PS: OCZ GameXStream OCZ600GXSSLI 600W ATX12V

I have 2 questions. the first being what do you guys think of the setup? I want a rig that will make Crysis pretty and run Far Cry 2 well also.

Also, How does PCIE 2.0 work? I noticed the MSI board that I have chosen doesn't list a PCIE 2.0 x 16 slot on it's specifications. Just one PCIE x16 slot. I also realize that the 4870 is designed for PCIE 2.0. Do I need to pick out a mobo that is specifically designed to accept PCIE 2.0 cards? Is there that much of a performance difference?

xBloodKnighTx

I was looking at those, but the reviews on newegg don't leave me too encouraged. I don't have my heart set on an MSI board. but I do want stability. I was looking at the MSI P45 Neo3, but people seem to be having trouble with the bios.

I'm going to be running all this at stock speeds, no overclocking. So any other mobo recommendations?

It gives no real performance difference in most cases. Tom's Hardware tested it by taping off the lanes on a PCI-E 2.0 X16 to artificially show how different PCI-E bandwidth amounts would affect performance in different games. They used both a 3850 and a 9800GX2 (the performance of the latter of which is a good indicator of how the current series of cards would run on lower bandwidths). They tested PCI-E 2.0's X16, X8 (equivalent to X16 on PCI-E 1.1), X4 ( X8 ), and X1 (X2).

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-2-0,1915-9.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-2-0,1915-10.html

So as you can see, PCI-E 2.0 X16 has little benefit over a regular PCI-E 1.1 X16 lane. Even with the 9800GX2 which puts out quite a large amount of data, PCI-E 1.1 X16 is pretty much identical to 2.0. Heck, even 2.0 4X, which is equivalent to 1.1 8x, seems to have no performance hit in most of the games. Only when they got to 2X effective 1.1 bandwidth did they see majorly reduced performance across the board.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X was the big exception to this, as it needed all the bandwidth it could get and took advantage of double the bandwidth of a 1.1 lane very well. CoD4 was the same to a somewhat lesser extent (though the 3850 didn't improve much going to 2.0 X16, so that tells us that only on modern cards that transfer a lot more data would you see a noticeable boost there in CoD4). Crysis was to a much lesser extent, and pretty much only at really high resolutions and using the 9800GX2 (so again, only with more modern, powerful cards).

Now despite the fact that most cases show little improvement going from PCI-E 1.1 to 2.0 on a card even as powerful as the 9800GX2, the latter is still better to have because you never know when more games like CoD4 or MSFSX that are bandwidth-hungry (and which could be very performance-intensive like Crysis, in which case you want all the extra frames you can get) will be released, not to mention the more powerful the cards get, the more data they'll be transferring and the more the PCI-E bandwidth will be filled up, so 2.0 is more future proof for when you upgrade your card to a newer PCI-E X16 card.

And future cards like the HD5800 or GTX 300 series may use all the bandwidth of pci-e 2.0.matrixian

Definitely not all of it, at least not in most games. I guarantee they won't even fill up the 1.1 X16 in most games; at most there will be a noticeable difference between 1.1 X8 effective bandwidth and 1.1 X16. But it doesn't hurt to have more headroom, anyway, so if you're upgrading now, PCI-E 2.0 is the way you want to go, no doubt about it.

I appreciate all the help guys. I've been out of the computer hardware arena for a while. I'm slipping lol.

Any thoughts on this board?

ASUS P5Q-E LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131296

It costs a bit more than I was looking to pay, but seems to have the features I was looking for.