Hi, silly question here - I have msi b350 mate motherboard currently running a gtx1060 6gb which is a PCI express 3.0 card

I see the new GPUs like nvidia's 3000 and 4000 series as well as AMD's lineup are PCI Express 4.0 x 16

Does that mean I have to upgrade my motherboard first if I were to buy a new GPU?

no, they are backwards compatible (pcie4 works in pcie3) but it will not reach advertised rates

thx a lot for the reply

do you know how big of an effect it has on performance? how much %-wise slower is lets say 6800xt plugged into a pciexpress 3.0 instead of 4.0?

I have ryzen 1600 + 1060 6gb, considering upgrading to a 5600 + 6800xt

you won't notice much of a difference. from what i read pcie 3-4 with mid-grade low-grade cards is 1%

well i wouldnt consider 6800xt a low or mid grade cards but ye I checked some benchmarks and comparisons and indeed it's literally a 1-2% difference in fps