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I'm putting together a gaming rig. I've already got the blah-blah stuff (case, power supply, a couple of disc drives) and I figure I can afford the guts (motherboard, cpu and memory) for a build timeframe of February 16, 17, 18 (an observed 3-day weekend where I work). I've got an idea how I want to go with it, but my big question is future video card readiness. I see that PCIe-16 curently comes in three flavors: 2.0, 2.1 and 3 and I've read that 3 has double the bandwidth of 2.x (a good thing). But I'm having trouble getting a handle on the physical, if any, difference(s) in the cards and/or motherboards. One of the things I read seems to indicate that a v2.1 motherboard can be upgraded to run v3 cards. Is that the case or is there something special about the cards' slots themselves? I'd be willing to invest a little more in a motherboard now and delay the video card(s) a bit in order to be sure that when I do that's all I'll need to get. Along the same lines, it seems that an APU's advantage over a CPU is limited to the former's ability to handle graphics without the need for a seperate video card, though not as well as a CPU with a video card. Am I on target with that or did I miss the boat (or maybe the whole fleet)? Bear in mind that I'm not...repeat, not...very tech-savvy. So please construct any responses somewhat like you're trying to explain advanced mathematics to a three-year old.