Nope. PCI-E 3 capable cards work perfectly in PCI-E 2 motherboards. In fact, no graphics card currently on the market can significantly benefit from the boost offered by PCI-E 3
Ah, OK. When shopping for a GPU compute server, I was paying attention to PCI-E 3.0 vs. 2.0 on the server motherboards.
I had assumed that it was a similar situation with consumer graphics cards these days, given how long v3.0 has been out.
Nope. PCI-E 3 capable cards work perfectly in PCI-E 2 motherboards. In fact, no graphics card currently on the market can significantly benefit from the boost offered by PCI-E 3. This includes Titan Xs in SLI: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7089/geforce-gtx-titan-twoway-...
>Things get a little more complicated with multi-GPU card builds.
Sure, but I would speculate that anyone going that route is an enthusiast who knows what they're getting into and is happy to do the research.