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I have a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R I bought back in 2008 with a "1 x PCI Express x16 slots". I referred to Gigabyte's website and there was no "version numbering" in the specifications tab. I need to upgrade my graphics card to a new one and almost all available graphics cards at least have a "PCI Express 2.0" interface.

So here are my questions:

1- Is "PCI Express x16" without version numbering equivalent to PCI Express 1.0?

2- Can I upgrade my graphics card to a new one with PCI Express 2.0 interface with the old PCI Express x16 slot?

Thanks for your time

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  • GPU-z should be able to tell you your PCI Express bus version. On the right hand side just below the graphics card logo.
    – Mokubai ♦
    Commented Sep 2, 2020 at 10:06

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It's almost certainly PCI-e 1.x.

  • If it had PCI-e 2.0 support, they'd advertise it (like they do with extra SATA2 chip on this motherboard)
  • PCI-e 2.0 spec was released in 2007 and the motherboard is a 2008 model. Considering that we're just getting PCI-e 4.0 support in 2020 while it was released in 2017, I think it would be unlikely to see PCI-e 2.0 in consumer-grade hardware just one year after release.

PCI Express is backwards- and forward-compatible. Versions of motherboard and expansion card PCI-e links don't have to match. They'll use the fastest standard that both devices support (PCI-e 1.x in this case).

Each PCI-e generation is twice as fast as the previous one, so the bandwidth for a PCI-e 2.0 card will be halved in a 1.x slot. This doesn't necessarily mean that the performance will be affected, because the card may not be able to saturate a PCI-e x16 link (modern GPUs work just fine on PCI-e 3.0 x8 links).

That being said, we're talking about very old hardware here. You should be able to find decent used GPUs for cheap and after the upgrade you'll probably be bottlenecked by CPU and maybe RAM, not PCI-e.

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    I'd agree with this summation with just a minor caveat. For a period of history Wifi standards were being used long before the standard was finalised, though it was indeed technically "released" if not officially. There was much "draft-n" equipment before it became a real standard. I'd suspect that this taught standards bodies to be more cautious, but there is a possibility that hardware gets manufactured and used before it is officially standardised. 802.11n "draft" equipment was manufactured in 2006 before the standard released 2009.
    – Mokubai ♦
    Commented Sep 2, 2020 at 9:56
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    As another bit of information worth including, GPU-z should be able to show the current PCIe standard available and what is in use. Though it may actually require a GPU to be fitted to be useful.
    – Mokubai ♦
    Commented Sep 2, 2020 at 10:07

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