Question about Ivy Bridge Motherboards and Sandy Bridge CPU's.

[Liarma]

Basically what I want to know is can you use say for example a 2500K or 2600K on a Z77 motherboard or vice versa a 3770K on a P67 or Z68 Motherboard? Will it work without any problems? I'm just curious and assumed it would since they are both the same socket. Thanks

 

[PetrolHead247]

You can use a Sandy Bridge chip on a Z77 straight out of the box, no problem. You can also use an Ivy Bridge chip on P67 and Z68 boards, but the P67 and Z68's require a BIOS update to make the IB chips to work on them. I see you already have a 2600K and a P67 Deluxe, so i'd recommend you NOT to "upgrade" to Ivy Bridge, it's not worth it at all if you already have a 2500K or 2600K etc... and a good P67 or Z68 board. Upgrading the board itself and keeping the CPU is ok for some, but your board is very good so i wouldn't bother with that either

 

[Liarma]

You can use a Sandy Bridge chip on a Z77 straight out of the box, no problem. You can also use an Ivy Bridge chip on P67 and Z68 boards, but the P67 and Z68's require a BIOS update to make the IB chips to work on them. I see you already have a 2600K and a P67 Deluxe, so i'd recommend you NOT to "upgrade" to Ivy Bridge, it's not worth it at all if you already have a 2500K or 2600K etc... and a good P67 or Z68 board. Upgrading the board itself and keeping the CPU is ok for some, but your board is very good so i wouldn't bother with that either

Ah ok thanks dude. Was just wondering as I've always been curious. I'm not really considering upgrading just yet, but PCIE3.0 does appeal to me, but we'll see when the time ones to upgrade my GPU

 

[PetrolHead247]

Ah ok thanks dude. Was just wondering as I've always been curious. I'm not really considering upgrading just yet, but PCIE3.0 does appeal to me, but we'll see when the time ones to upgrade my GPU

PCI-E 3.0 is not worth the money. In benchmarks with a single Gen 3 card you don't see any performance gains with 3.0 over 2.0 at all. When running multiple Gen 3 cards you do see a little improvement, but not much

 

[Liarma]

PCI-E 3.0 is not worth the money. In benchmarks with a single Gen 3 card you don't see any performance gains with 3.0 over 2.0 at all. When running multiple Gen 3 cards you do see a little improvement, but not much

I just need to clarify this. With my motherboard, an ASUS P8P67 Deluxe, when using SLI or Crossfire it runs in 8x/8x mode. So If I were to use for arguments sake 2x HD 7970's in crossfire on my motherboard would that be hindering the performance of them? Because I would be running 2x PCIE3.0 cards in PCIE2.0 8x mode. Which if I am not mistaken is the equivalent to PCIE3.0 4x speed. Just want to clear this up because I am considering getting 2x MSI 7970 Lightning cards and with my motherboard would I be seeing a noticeable performance loss?

 

[doubleton]

I see you already have a 2600K and a P67 Deluxe, so i'd recommend you NOT to "upgrade" to Ivy Bridge, it's not worth it at all if you already have a 2500K or 2600K etc... and a good P67 or Z68 board.

 

[SieB]

I see you already have a 2600K and a P67 Deluxe, so i'd recommend you NOT to "upgrade" to Ivy Bridge, it's not worth it at all if you already have a 2500K or 2600K etc... and a good P67 or Z68 board.

This^^^

No point in changing to IB there is no difference and if you lose the silicon lottery you might end up with a 3770K that performs slower than your 2600k overclocked.

 

[garih]

I just need to clarify this. With my motherboard, an ASUS P8P67 Deluxe, when using SLI or Crossfire it runs in 8x/8x mode. So If I were to use for arguments sake 2x HD 7970's in crossfire on my motherboard would that be hindering the performance of them? Because I would be running 2x PCIE3.0 cards in PCIE2.0 8x mode. Which if I am not mistaken is the equivalent to PCIE3.0 4x speed. Just want to clear this up because I am considering getting 2x MSI 7970 Lightning cards and with my motherboard would I be seeing a noticeable performance loss?

according to a test by a Canadian YouTube reviewer. on pcie 2.0 between 8x and 16x no difference in fps with dual gtx 580's in sli,

 

[airdeano]

Tom pretty much said the same thing and that there isnt really any hardware to make

the 3.0 sweat much less the 2.0. i wouldn't loose to much sleep if you were 16x/16x or 8x/8x.

just watch the specs on x4 on dual PCI-e specs.. that is a frame killer.

airdeano

 

[Liarma]

Ok so you're saying that if i were to run 2x 7970's in crossfire on PCIE2.0 8x/8x I'd see little to no performance loss?

 

[Master&Puppet]

Depending on the game, you might see upto a 15% drop in fps, often is is 0%. The thing is that we are talking about 2x 7970s - even in a worst case scenario we are talking about still getting well over 60 fps in the hardest games - you just won't notice the difference.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5458/the-radeon-hd-7970-reprise-pcie-bandwidth-overclocking-and-msaa