Hi Gigabyte Community,
I was looking to buy a new GTX 900 series graphics card, specifically the 970. I was worried that I may not be able to run it at all. Thinking that I might have to upgrade to a newer motherboard, I know the sandy bridge chip-set on Z68 was a bit sketchy in that some mobos may not run GPU's that have PCi Express 3.0. Especially those with SLi features, the premise is that on the Sandy Bridge chip-set as far as I know you cannot run SLi/Crossfire unless you have an Ivy Bridge mobo or upwards which natively supports PCi Express 3.0 on the chipset and board. I would like to test SLi in mobo like mine, if someone would like to bless me with another GPU hint hint; D
So just of curiosity and hunger to play all the recent AAA games in Full HD at max settings I purchased the GTX 970 to run in my mobo, dreading the worst it that it may not boot or not recognise the motherboard it was seated in. I installed it in the top PCi Express 2.0 Slot, it worked in an instant. Prior to the upgrade I did have a GTX 570 previously with the most recent drivers. So please keep that in mind, so you may need an older GPU then install the most recent drivers. I popped in the Dual- DVi port in there as I read on some forums some 900 series GPU's may not work in HDMI depending on how old the mobo and the monitor is. I have a quite an old one so I switched to DVI just to be safe.
Another thing I have noticed with the GPU is that the PCI Express speed switches depending on how much load an application is putting on the GPU. If you use GPU-Z and open the PCI Express Render app it will go from 1.1x to 2.0x speed. Is this normal or is it dependent on the GPU you have, as I have a EVGA GTX 970 SC which at idle or near minimal usage the fans do not spin, until a certain threshold is reached. I also found out that these mobo’s that have SLi/Crossfire have a PCI Express Switch if a device is connected to Sandy bridge with a switch it will only go up to PCi Express 2.0. If you a non-SLi/Crossfire Z68 and install Ivy Bridge CPU it will run at 3.0 speed.
So after my bit of experimenting I would like to make a list of motherboards whether Gigabyte or other makes on Z68/P67 chipsets can run PCi Express motherboards. If users here post their name of Z68/P67 motherboards with the GPU’s then I’ll update the list.
TL DR:- Z68XP-UD3 mobo's can run 900 series GPU's and likely current R9 Radeon Series GPU's too.
- AFAIK SLi does not work on Sandy Bridge need Ivy Bridge with a board that states it has PCI Express 3.0.
- May need to set PCi Express speed in bios for it to be recognised by Os.
Could it be possible for this to be stickied moderator please as I'm sure there's plenty of other Z68 users out there thinking whether they would need to upgrade their motherboard to a newer chipset thanks.
