Radeon 4850 PCIe 1.0a compatible?

[Thowllly]

I'm thinking about buying a PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 (it's only $171 before vat. )

My MB is a ECS Nforce4-A754 or something like that. I belive nforce4 is PCIe 1.0a

Does the 4850 work with PCIe 1.0a, or does it require something like 1.1 or better? AMDs product info only say it requires a 16x PCIe slot, nothing more, so according to that it should work, but I would really like to know for sure.

Anybody know?

 

[Freak'n Big Panda]

I'm using mine on a sck 939 NF4 ultra board so I think you're OK

 

[Thowllly]

Thanks, that's great to hear. I think I'll just go ahead and order one then

 

[Davros]

amd cards start up in pci-e 1 mode and switch to v2 when the o/s is loaded
has anyone tested a nvidia v2.0 card in that board ?

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I searched this up a bit, and also got a response on b3d that it should work. What I found out is that 2.0 cards will always work with 1.0a boards with the only exeption being a via chipset in which case it wont work.

Also I believe ati cards from the 3XXX series and up have their own chip that detects what version of pci-e is in use and switch to that one automatically.

 

[Davros]

has anyone tried an nv pci-e 2.0 card in a 1.0a board ?

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

nv cards should be working fine too.

 

[Dave Baumann]

amd cards start up in pci-e 1 mode and switch to v2 when the o/s is loaded

Actually they start up in PCIe 1.0 and then move to Gen 2 as soon as it detects the host is able to. When the OS and drivers are loaded we can switch between Gen 1 and Gen 2 as part of PowerPlay.

 

[Thowllly]

Just an update. The 4850 works great. Except there is something wrong with one of the dvi outputs, if I connect my monitor (24" Dell lcd) to the connector closest to the MB the red color channel stays fully saturated all the time, but I doubt that has anything to do with PCIe versions I guess I should get it replaced, but I'm not sure I'll bother...