[Locla]

Thanks

 

It turns out that the PCI-E revision is v1.1:

 

 

 

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Best Answer

If the card at the attached link will fit in your case you are all good, Gigabyte 256 - bit R9 270

[phillpower2]

Best Answer

If the card at the attached link will fit in your case you are all good, Gigabyte 256 - bit R9 270

[Locla]

The thread that you linked me regarding PCI-E revisions and compatibility states that AMD revision 3.0 cards are not backwards compatible with 1.1 slots. The card you just linked is AMD revision 3.0! My understanding was that I am limited to Nvidia cards, as their 3.0 cards are still backwards compatible with 1.1 slots. I'm confused

[phillpower2]

From the link that I provided;

UPDATE: (After reading the comments I went back to researching again over this question and I must partly decline my statement of the PCIe configuration not being backward compatible. They in fact are very much compatible after a motherboard update (In some cases even the update wasn't needed. Sorry for the misguided information but I tried my best of reaching to the root of this controversy and reached a partially mistaken conclusion. So once again guys, if your graphic card doesn't work on your old motherboard then an UPDATE from from motherboard manufacturer will most likely solve your problem. My sincere apologies for any inconvenience or confusion caused. Thank you for all sharing your helpful experiences, as my final aim was to help ease the confusion and frustration that is involved with building a PC for the 1st time. Cheers to PC gaming!)

 

 

From PCI - SIG  who set the standards for PCI-E slots;

 

Q: Will PCIe 3.0 products be compatible with existing PCIe 1.x and PCIe 2.x products?
A: PCI-SIG is proud of its long heritage of developing compatible architectures and its members have consistently produced compatible and interoperable products. In keeping with this tradition, the PCIe 3.0 architecture is fully compatible with prior generations of this technology, from software to clocking architecture to mechanical interfaces. That is to say PCIe 1.x and 2.x cards will seamlessly plug into PCIe 3.0-capable slots and operate at their highest performance levels. Similarly, all PCIe 3.0 cards will plug into PCIe 1.x- and PCIe 2.x-capable slots and operate at the highest performance levels supported by those configurations. The following chart summarizes the interoperability between various generations of PCIe and the resultant interconnect performance level:

Transmitter Device Receiver Device Channel Interconnect Data Rate 8GHz 8GHz 8GHz 8.0GT/s 5GHz 5GHz 5GHz 5.0GT/s 2.5GHz 2.5GHz 2.5GHz 2.5GT/s 8GHz 5GHz 8GHz 5.0GT/s 8GHz 2.5GHz 8GHz 2.5GT/s 5GHz 2.5GHz 5GHz 2.5GT/s

In short, the notion of the compatible highest performance level is modeled after the mathematical least common denominator (LCD) concept. Also, PCIe 3.0 products will need to support 8b/10b encoding when operating in a pre-PCIe 3.0 environment.

 

PCI Express FAQ

 

You are right to ask the question btw 

[Locla]

Ahh, I somehow missed the most important part!

 

Great, found one for 100; it's on its way  

[phillpower2]

Keep us posted 

[Locla]

Hello again, GPU and drivers installed! Unfortunately, something's not right

 

My optimum screen resolution is 1920x1080, however when I use this setting the bottom portion of my screen is blacked out. I've messed around with different resolution settings but none of them work properly

 

EDIT: Never mind, I found the setting required in the catalyst control centre, and everything is looking beauts! Runs everything at maximum settings. Thank you so much for guiding me through the process; I won't need a new build for some years now

 

As a side note, after testing some games out I decided to run Fur Mark to see what the benchmarking app had to say about the new card. As soon as I initialized the test, everything went DEAD. Unplugged the power and re-plugged, and still no reaction to pushing the power button. Un- and re-plugged and tried again and it reluctantly came to life. I will not be running Fur Mark again! Needless to say I experienced one of those dread moments that occur when you've just killed your PC... so glad it came back to life; all seems fine now!

Edited by Locla, 02 May 2014 - 07:50 AM.

[phillpower2]

Hopefully it was nothing more than a blip caused by a driver or something but for now just keep the computer running  as it is and avoid the temptation to try and tweak any settings etc.

 

Two thing I suggest that you do are 1: Create a new restore point now that you have the computer running correctly and 2: Download and run HWMonitor so that you can keep a check on your temps and voltages, details here

[Locla]

It just happened again! It was actually quite funny as I had just detonated a bomb (in WoW ) and everything went dead again. I repeatedly unplugged and replugged the power cable and the switch still wasn't turning anything on. I opened the case to see if anything was visibly burnt out, and it was only when I tried the switch one more time that it came on. 

 

There's deffo something it doesn't like about the card; the first time it died was when I had just started up Fur Mark, and the second time it was due to intense detonation visuals.

 

 HWMonitor is showing everything at a steady 34/35 c. As long as it keeps coming back to life I don't mind, just wondered what your thoughts are!

[Locla]

Hello again Phillpower2 and forum!

 

Just for some background information, I recently created a topic entitled 'Why does my 64-bit windows 7 only use 3 out of 4 GBs RAM?' 

 

http://www.geekstogo...t-of-4-gbs-ram/

 

Now, I've always thought that my motherboard can only handle a max of 4 GB of RAM due to the following text: 

 

Addressing Memory With 4-GB Configurations

Your computer supports a maximum of 4 GB of memory when you use four 1-GB DIMMs. Current operating systems, such as Microsoft® Windows® XP, can only use a maximum of 4 GB of address space; however, the amount of memory available to the operating system is less than 4 GB. Certain components within the computer require address space in the 4-GB range. Any address space reserved for these components cannot be used by computer memory. 

 

This was written years ago and can be found here, under '5, Removing and Installing Parts, Memory P.76'

 

http://downloads.del...anual_en-us.pdf      

 

Now, I recently bought some RAM for a friend of mine: Corsair XMS2 DDR2 CM2X2048-6400C5

 

This RAM came in 2x2 GB sticks. Being adventurous I tried this RAM in my mobo and hey presto it worked, my question to you is this; if I buy 4x 2GB memory sticks, will this work in my mobo??

 

Here's my Speccy: http://speccy.pirifo...wuOTVs3swqDXuog

 

Please be assured that any help is greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

[phillpower2]

Hello again Locla,

 

There are other things that will limit the amount of Ram that the MB can handle, one is the BIOS and the other is the CPU, your original Crucial link is no longer valid, can you post an updated result link for us,  Crucial system scanner tool 

 

​BTW, I may not be around until Sunday evening due to other commitments I'm afraid.

[Locla]

 

Hi Phill,

 

Many thanks for your quick response. I had believed that the MB was unable to handle more than 1GB per slot, so it was a revelation when I tried the 2GB sticks and the system recognised them.

 

Here is my crucial link http://www.crucial.c...AE1986031D926C3

 

EDIT: No worries, have a great weekend

Edited by Locla, 21 March 2015 - 05:40 PM.

[phillpower2]

Hello Locla,

 

All the information that I can find + the Crucial results suggest that 4GB of Ram is the max I'm afraid 

 

As per my reply #41 there are other things that will limit the amount of Ram that the MB can handle, one is the BIOS and the other is the CPU, if you take a look at the information charts here you will note that the maximum amount of Ram that is present when the Extreme edition CPU is tested it is 4096MB so it is possible that the CPU itself is only compatible with a maximum of 4 gig of Ram be it 4 X 1GB or 2 X 2GB sticks, however, at the same time it could be that the MBs BIOS chip will not recognise more than 4GB of Ram and again be it 4 X 1GB or 2 X 2GB sticks, the one test that you could have done was to try adding two of your 1GB sticks while you had the two 2GB sticks populating two of the slots, is this still an option?

 

JFYI: The one inconsistency that I did note is that your Crucial results did not include any 2 X 2GB sticks options, Crucial do supply them as you can see here

 

You are welcome btw 

[Locla]

Hi Phill,

 

It's looking the same way to me too thanks for the info charts.

 

I did try the 2GB sticks along with the 1GB sticks (with correct slot pairing) but the bios would not initiate and I got diagnostic error lights indicating that 'Memory modules are detected, but a memory failure has occured.' I did expect that to happen though, purely as the memory is not a perfect match.

 

These are the Crucial results with the actual 2GB sticks installed: http://uk.crucial.co...8174AF131D926C3

 

I think 4GB is probably as good as it's going to get! I'm going to ask if I can borrow all 4 x 2GB sticks just in case though, and I'll post back the results

 

Many thanks,

 

Dan

[phillpower2]

Morning Dan,

 

Thanks for the update 

 

If the Corsair Ram was going to work alongside your 1GB sticks it would have clocked backwards to the slower speed of your Ram, the 1.8V voltage matches but the CAS latency and timings are not the same so there is an outside chance the latter tripped things up but I suspect that is unlikely as your latest Crucial scan shows the 4GB populating two of the 4 slots with the other two slots being unusable.