ok heres my problem:
I cannot afford a pcie 16 2.0 slot mobo, but i want to get a 2.0 card b/c they have noticabley better gpus. so, can i get a 2.0 card and put it in a pcie regualr slot?
yea they're backwards compatible. there was one thing that you have to watch out for but i dont remember what it is, so maybe someone else can chim in.
Actually most do work, it's certain chipset that refused to work and even these were fixed with a BIOS update.
@OP - what card are you getting? As everyone said, there's nothing to worry about, but if you're getting something really high-end like a 4870 or better, it will probably bottleneck.