Hey everyone! I'm considering upgrading my graphics card from two GTX 1080s in SLI to an RTX 5080. The issue is that my motherboard only has a PCIe X16 3.0 slot. I mainly use my computer for gaming, so I have a couple of questions. First, will an RTX 5080 work in the PCIe 3.0 slot? I'm pretty sure it will, but I'd like to confirm. Second, how much of a performance hit can I expect using PCIe 3.0 instead of 5.0? Are there specific scenarios where I might see a bottleneck due to not using PCIe 5.0? Here are some details about my build: Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 5 Wifi, AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (6 cores, 3400MHz), 2x GTX 1080 SLI, Kingston HyperX Predator RGB 16GB DDR4-2933 CL15, Acer Predator X34 3440x1440 at 100Hz. Thanks!
2 Answers
Yep, the RTX 5080 will work! The performance hit is minimal, usually around 3%. Just a heads up, if you were thinking of using the 1080 alongside it for SLI or something similar, it might get tricky if the 5080 is running at gen3 x8, but if you're planning on getting rid of the 1080s altogether, you should be fine!
Yes, you can definitely use the RTX 5080 in a PCIe 3.0 slot since they are compatible with each other. Regarding performance, using PCIe 3.0 instead of 5.0 might give you a slight decrease, roughly around 3% in some cases. If you plan on keeping your GTX 1080 for something like an SLI setup, running the 5080 at gen3 x8 could cause some issues, but if you’re ditching both 1080s, it shouldn't be a problem at all!
Thanks! How significant do you think the CPU bottleneck will be?
What do you mean by SLI? I’m planning to just get rid of both 1080s.