MSI Launches the World's First PCI Express Gen.3 Mainboard

[Sam_Reynolds]

MSI, the world-renowned mainboard and graphics card manufacturer, officially launches the Z68A-GD80 (G3), featuring world?s first large bandwidth PCI Express Gen 3 mainboard, and the latest UEFI technology: Click BIOS II which features a homogenous interface both under Windows and the UEFI interface. Conforming to Intel?s latest design standard... [ Read full article ]

[Sagath]

MSI Z68A-GD80 (G3) is backwards compatible with all the devices with PCI Express 2.0 or older devices already available on the market and enhances their performance considerably. For example, PCI Express 2.0 SSD devices on MSI Z68-GD80 (G3) mainboards perform 14% faster than on competitors mainboards.

Interesting statement, but realistically only RAID-based SSD's on PCIe could possibly exploit the bandwidth presently. Are we still not limited on GPU levels unless in a Tri/Quad GPU setup? I remember someone a while ago showing that 8x and 16x SLI/Xfire was almost a wash performance wise so I suspect the same would be true going from 16x gen 2 to 16x gen 3

[NSdeadly1]

Linus over at NCIX did a comparison and it showed only a difference of a few fps between 8x and 16x. This sort of bandwidth would be great for something like the OCZ Revo ssd though.

Originally Posted by NSdeadly1

Linus over at NCIX did a comparison and it showed only a difference of a few fps between 8x and 16x. This sort of bandwidth would be great for something like the OCZ Revo ssd though.

SLI Using Dual PCIe 16x vs 8x - How Much Bandwidth is Needed? Linus Tech Tips

YouTube - ‪SLI Using Dual PCIe 16x vs 8x - How Much Bandwidth is Needed? Linus Tech Tips‬‏

Very interesting stuff.

[KylSp]

Introduction - GTX 480 SLI @ 2560x1600 - GTX 480 SLI PCIe Bandwidth Perf. - x16/x16 vs. x8/x8 | [H]ard|OCP

yes but would this mean that PCIx gen 3 x4 would be equivalent to PCIx Gen2 x8 bandwidth??

@Unregistered: yes, it is.