What is difference between PCI Express 3.0 and 2.0?
The difference between 3.0 and 2.0 is evolution, not revolution.The slot is the same, and the newer specification supports faster transfers, but is compatible with previous speeds.A R7 240 should not be significantly disadvantaged by operating at the 2.0 transfer speed.Depending on what you want to do, and how much CPU power you have to avoid bottlenecking something better, I’d be wary about choosing a R7 240 though - if there’s something you can’t run satisfactorily, it may not be enough to make a huge difference.One advantage though, with a restrained power consumption of 30W TDP, it won’t need a power connector or PSU upgrade.These low to midrange cards are terrible value new, good used examples can generally be found at about half the price, as they are passed on by upgraders.
Is there a speed difference if I install a M.2 SSD in a PCI-e SSD slot vs a non-PCI-e SSD slot?
All versions of the M.2 interface (formerly dubbed the Next Generation Form Factor, NGFF) support PCI Express... if you have an M.2 slot without PCIe, that's non-standard. Of course, an M.2 SSD can choose to only support SATA. There are actually 12 versions of the M.2 card defined, but only four versions in regular use. They're defined by the card key -- the missing pins. Specific cards can be keyed for two different main board connectors. The four variations are: Key A: PCIe x 2, a USB 2.0 port, I2C, and DisplayPort x 4.Key B: PCIe x 2, SATA, USB 2.0 + 3.0, UIM (basically a phone SIM), HSIC (USB 2.0 low power interface), SSIC (USB 3.0 lower power interface), I2C + SMBus, and audio. Key E: PCIe x 2, USB 2.0, I2C, SDIO, Serial UART, I2S Audio. Key M: PCIe x 4, SATA, SMBusThe peak performance of the SATA 3.0 interface is raw 6.0GT/s (uncoded 600MB/s) in each direction, which is fast enough for an HDD raid, but not fast enough for some of the latest SSDs. The PCIe SSD in my ASUS laptop benchmarks at around 1200MB/s, for example. The peak performance of the PCIe 3.0 interface is 8.0GT/s per lane, so 16GT/s for the x2 interface, 32GT for the x4 interface. That translates to an uncoded 1.969GB/s and 3.938GB/s for x4. So bottom line, the PCIe x 2 version can run up to 3x faster than SATA, the PCIe x 4 version can run up to 6x faster than SATA. The trick is sorting out what kind of M.2 interface you have on your PC, which will determine what kind of speedup you might see with a PCIe compliant M.2 card versus a SATA SSD of any kind. Newer PC systems are also going to see SATA Express connectors. The SATA International Organization has decided there's no point in trying to make SATA itself any faster, so the new SATA Express standard is a single connection that can run SATA or PCIe x 2 signals. There is some concern over PCIe for mobile applications, but it's been shown that power consumption for PCIe x 2 is not substantially more than SATA, while PCIe x 4 does use significantly more power.
What is the difference between PCI Express X16 2.0 and 3.0 for gaming?
The difference between PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 in gaming is very small. PCIe 3.0 will give you an increase of about 10%. Nowadays almost all modern motherboards have PCIe 3.0. If you get a motherboard with PCIe 2.0 you will probably not be able to use DDR4 RAM, a modern CPU, USB 3.0 and other stuff.
What is the difference between PCI E x 16 and PCI Express 3?
When somebody says x16 or x1 or x2 or x4 or x8, it means the number or pcie lanes or serial pair wires in each direction. When someone says pcie 3 or pcie 2, it is referring to version of pcie spec, gen3 or gen2.
Does a GTX 780 support PCI Express 2.0?
Yes the GTX 780 works fine in a 2.0 slot. No, there isn't any performance loss. Even the GTX 780 doesn't exceed the maximum bandwidth of a version 2.0 slot. Actually, even the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690 and Radeon HD 7990 don't, and those are faster than the GTX 780. So for now, the higher maximum bandwidth provided by the 3.0 slot is simply a higher theoretical maximum- no cards have been introduced yet which can actually take advantage of that extra bandwidth. See the section on version 3.0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express HardOCP's testing concluded there was very little difference, but even the 5-10 percent difference they encountered was due to the 3.0 cards being tested with faster Ivy Bridge CPUs & motherboards compared to Sandy Bridge for the 2.0 cards. http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/07/1...
GeForce GTX 570 vs GeForce GTX 660?
Alright. The GTX 660 uses the new Kepler architecture. It manages to achieve cooler operation while clock speeds are higher. It's way newer technology, as the GTX 660 was released in September of 2012. The GTX 570 was released in December of 2010, almost 2 years before the GTX 660. The 660 is PCI-E 3.0 technology, which gives it extra bandwidth for maximum performance. The GTX 570 only uses PCI-E 2.0. Furthermore, the GTX 660 has 2 GB and 3 GB versions of the card. The 570 only has 1 GB and a little over 2.5GB. Yet again, the 660 comes out on top, having memory speeds of 980MHz 1033MHz 1084MHz 980MHz 6000MHz (core, average boost, max boost, shader and memory), while the 570 has lower clock speeds of 732MHz, 1464MHz, 3800MHz (core, shader and memory). The GTX 570 does not come equipped with boost. The GTX 570 has a Bandwidth of 152 GB/s. The 660 only comes with a bandwidth of 144.2 GB/s. Although not a big difference, it may differ performance slightly. They both use GDDR5. The 660 uses 140W TDP and the 570 uses 219W TDP. Here's where the kick comes in. The GTX 570 retails for around $250. The GTX 660 retails for around the same price, around $210-250. The GTX 660 uses newer technology, less power which creates less heat, has a drastic impact on performance and uses the new PCIe 3.0. Considering you've come here to choose between these two, I would strongly recommend the GTX 660, perhaps even the 660Ti. A lot more performance for less power usage and maybe even cheaper. Relatively, you could wait for the 700 series to be released. If you are in need of a card now, get the 660, if not, wait for 700.
How much performance am I losing if installing a PCI 3.0 card into a 2.0 socket?
I am assuming that the PCI-e slot is 16x not 8x or lower and you are using it normal desktop applications like games.A PCI-e gen 3 8x slot has the same bandwidth as a gen 2 16x slot. Even a Titan XP(big P not newer little p) is not bottlenecked in games by a gen 3 8x slot. You're 1050 ti will be the same performance on pcie gen 2 compared to gen 3.Link to reference- Titan X Performance: PCI-E 3.0 x8 vs x16
Can a PCI 3.0 fit a motherboard that supports only PCI 2.0?
Yes, as Jeff Fuhrman stated, the main difference will be bandwidth. Each “lane” of PCIe 1.0 supports 250 MB/s, PCIe 2.0 lanes support 500 MB/s, and PCIe 3.0 lanes support 985 MB/s.The only instance that I could think of where this could become a bottleneck might be a GT1030 in a PCIe 1.0 motherboard. The GT1030 only has a 4-lane (X4) design and it is a pretty powerful little card when overclocked that could realistically hit the bandwidth ceiling of 1000 MB/s of a PCIe 1.0 4X lane capacity. Fortunately, PCIe 1.0 motherboads these days are pretty rare and this should never be an issue.In PCIe 2.0, say you install a SSD rated at 550 MB/s in a 1X riser card. Your bandwidth is 500 MB/s so you might limit your top end on the SSD very slightly, but not by an amount that you would ever notice.
What Motherboard would be compatible with the NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580?
For that gtx, you only need any pci-e x16 slot, but in order to run it at the full performance, you would need a pci-e x16 3.0 slot. Although the performance difference between 3.0 and 2.0 and even 3.0 and 1.0 is really small, if you can afford those parts, I bet you wouldn't mind paying extra. Your CPU socket is LGA 2011 like you already said. So here is a popular motherboard on new egg. ASUS Sabertooth X79 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131801