motherboard selection

volcano1

Member
ok i was thinking of the amd radeon r7 240 graphics card but it looks like all the boards say in order to support pci epress 3.0 you need a fm2+ apu. either it says on newegg.com when i select a board or says on the manufacture website. i am getting confused on motherboard selection.
 
What CPU do you want? That kind of determines what board you can have.

They pretty much all have PCI Express 3.0 these days.
 
Don't worry about PCIe 3, as that graphics card would struggle to saturate PCIe 1.

Just get something that works, with PCIe x 16 slot.

But what current motherboard and graphics card are you running? Because to be honest, most modern-ish motherboards will run that card provided you have a reasonable PSU. If this is the case, then i would spend every cent on the graphics card and not worry about PCIe 3. Please don't expect the R7 240 to do gaming.
 
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ok i was thinking of the amd radeon r7 240 graphics card but it looks like all the boards say in order to support pci epress 3.0 you need a fm2+ apu. either it says on newegg.com when i select a board or says on the manufacture website. i am getting confused on motherboard selection.

FM+ boards support PCIe 3.0. The controller is on the processor, so you need a FM2+ processor (Kaveri) . FM2 processors only supports PCIe 2.0 (
Trinity and Richland)
 
ASUS R7240-2GD3-L Radeon R7 240 2GB graphics card

AMD Athlon X4 740 Trinity 3.2GHz Socket FM2 65W Quad-Core processor

g.skill ddr3 1866 2gb x4

ASRock FM2A75 PRO4+ FM2+ / FM2 motherboard

i am no a stickler on the motherboard. the board i was orginally wanting to use was discontinued. i am open to suggestions on the motherboard as long as it does not go above $85 and support lots of fans. this is for a computer build if that helps any.
 
AMD 760K Richland

If you want a asrock board-ASRock FM2A88X Extreme4+
I would get the Gigabyte GA-F2A88X-UP4.
 
not sure what is so special about the processor but would i be able to run that graphics card in a pci express 2.0 slot. i have been debating a dual graphics setup. been thinking of running AMD A8-5500 processor instead. the r7 240 uses about the same bandwidth as 2.0 slots am i able to use a pci express 2.0 x16.
 
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PCIe 3.0 cards are backwards compatible with PCIe 2.0. They'll just downclock to PCIe2.0 speeds.
 
how much of a difference is that going to be with this card. the fm2+ cards are expensive and dont even support dual graphics.
 
how much of a difference is that going to be with this card. the fm2+ cards are expensive and dont even support dual graphics.

Who's giving you this information? What do you mean by a FM2+ card? A R7 240 is a lowend video card. Its not going to use anywhere near the bandwidth of a PCIe 2.0 slot. Between a 2.0 and 3.0 slot your not going to see any difference at all.
 
i am not very good with graphics card. the r 7 240 says it requires a fm2+ processor in order to run pci express 3.0. i throught 2.0 only ran at 16gps this card on the amd website says it runs up to Up to 72 GB/s.
 
That's the bandwidth of the 3.0 slot is capable of. You could probably run a R7 240 on a PCIe 1.0 slot and not tell much difference. Cant really tell much difference even if you were running a R9 280X/290/X between PCIe 2.0 and 3.0
 
ok then i guess i dont know how to caculate bandwidth. i believe i know how to caculate bandwidth on ram. do you mind giving me a brief tutorial.
 
There is definitely a difference between PCIe 1 and 2. The difference between 2 and 3 is about 5% depending on the card, but you'd need a high end card for that.

You are not going to saturate PCIe2 with a R7 240. Not going to happen.

PCIe 2 x 16 is the same as PCIe 3.0 8x - PCIe3 is essentially double.
 
There is definitely a difference between PCIe 1 and 2. The difference between 2 and 3 is about 5% depending on the card, but you'd need a high end card for that.

You are not going to saturate PCIe2 with a R7 240. Not going to happen.

PCIe 2 x 16 is the same as PCIe 3.0 8x - PCIe3 is essentially double.

Is there a way of calculating if a card will saturate a certain bandwidth. I know my 7850 isn't bottlenecked by my 2.0 slot despite being a 3.0 card. Also you mention 5 percent difference between the 2.0 and 3.0. Is that just the max difference you'll see in today's cards or overall. I assume just today's cards since 3.0 is double 2.0.
 
ok then i guess i dont know how to caculate bandwidth. i believe i know how to caculate bandwidth on ram. do you mind giving me a brief tutorial.

Your not looking at this the right way. The bandwidth your talking about is for the PCIe bus itself. Your card is PCIe 3.0 compatible. Your card can not pass enough data to saturate the PCIe 3.0 bus or even a PCIe 2.0 bus. In other words I don't think you could tell the difference with a R9 290X running on a PCIe 2.0 or 3.0. If you want to know how much bandwidth a R7 240 uses, look it up, don't really think anybody has even tested a card that lowend.
 
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