I'm am no computer expert by all means but I have some knowledge since I built two computers so here is the question:


I have NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 TI with a PCI-E 2.0 x16 and is working perfect for the project I am doing. I would like to upgrade the video card to a EVGA GeForce GTX 970 but this video card requires a PCI Express 3.0 x16. As far as I know I can throw this PCI Express 3.0 x16 video card in the PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot for it should be backwards compatible but will I be able to utilize the video card fully with the project that I am currently running? I know I can use the upgrade because I have used a video card that was designed for PCI Express 3.0 x16 in a PCI-E 2.0 x16 on this computer before but with strange results. I believe it wasnt being utilized fully for I would only reach 50% utilization of gpu according to the Throttle program (latest version) but since I recently switch video cards and downgraded (because my sons computer was acting up and I needed to see if the problem moved to my computer when using his video card, because I thought that's what the problem was, I found that his video card work much much better then mine with 100% utilization of the gpu.)I have had no problems at all and have seen an increase in average credits by 4,000. So......did I just have a video card that was just not acting right or was it because of the PCI Express version of my motherboard vs. the version of the video card requirements? Thank you for your help in advance.

Dartanian.

Hi. What project are you currently running? I believe the difference in productivity between PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 would generally be very minimal, if noticeable at all. There can be a little variation between different projects on that, but it shouldn't be a dramatic step anyway.

You could search the forum of that spesific project and see if there's any talk about GPU's and that thing.

Thanks for the response. The project is Milkyway and your right there shouldn't be that much of a difference but I did notice a BIG difference when changing the video cards. I don't know why and that's what I'm trying to find out. :-)

Much more likely to be because the 550Ti is Fermi technology and the 970 is Maxwell technology - two generations later. I don't think MilkyWay has separate applications optimised to cover that difference.

Well the video card I had in before was a gtx 650 which falls under pci-e 3.0 and that's the one that didn't seem right but nevertheless I was able to utilize the gpu but only at half power. I'm wondering if I buy the gtx 970 if it will do the same because it falls under pci-e 3.0 instead of pci-e 2.0 but I don't know if the versions really have that much of an impact on the gpu usage. I do know that there is a loss when putting a 3.0 into a 2.0 but I don't know what the results really are and if what I experienced is part of the result from the version. And you are right also because of the difference in technology, I'm thinking that is the main reason but not totally sure :-)