PCI and PCI-e

I have an older computer with PCI slots. The graphics card I would like to buy requires a PCI-e slot. I understand that PCI-e cards will simply step down to PCI speed if used in a PCI slot. Does this hold true for graphics cards, and how badly will this impact performance?

I can't afford a new computer just now, and want to just do the minimum upgrade. My current system uses the Intel 910 chipset, which shouldn't be able to run SL.

Any ideas on how to do this on a shoestring budget?

TIA

PCI-e Cards will not fit into a PCI slot, it is a completely different technology, to take advantage of it you would have to buy a new motherboard.

The best you can get for PCI will be an nVidia 6200, and I'm not sure if you'll get all that great an experience out of it. If you get one, get one with 256m instead of 128m of video ram on it. It's a bit of a gimpy card, so trying to maximize the ram on it will help.

They'll run $75-$90us.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814139021

Thanks for the quick replies.

Based on the fact that upgrading video would essentially mean upgrading EVERYTHING, I suspect I'm going to see about a new computer. This isn't the ideal, but it IS what I expected. The current machine is 3 yrs old, anyway.

Can't afford top-of-the-line, so now I'm off to seek out the wonders of the middle-of-the-road, or perhaps the bottom of the barrel.

The "latest and greatest" of 6 months ago is pretty affordable, the top of a year ago even moreso. If it was the top then, it will still be quite good now.

If your computer is only three years old, it's surprising that it doesn't already have a PCI-e slot. It almost certainly will have its predecessor, an AGP slot, and there are some very decent video cards still available for those; I believe the fastest is the NVidia 7600GS.

What's the make and model number of your motherboard? Any idea? If not, SiSoft Sandra, available at http://tinyurl.com/4epf6w can help you identify it.

P2

Phoenix you angel! Thank you so much for asking that question.

I found the owner's manual online, and discovered that my antique does indeed have one PCI-e slot.

Problem solved.

Now I just have to pick a card, any card , upgrade the RAM, and make sure I've got enough electricity to run everything.

The system is a Dell Dimension 3100/E310, and I apparently bought it at the end of 2005. It was a refurbished model, so not necessarily the most current at the time.

Can't afford the best, but now I can get something good enough. Beats buying a new PC.

Must find chocolates to celebrate with...

8600gts is very good for a mid-priced card.

Although you may need a better power supply. Here's a place that has Dell compatible ones (The 500W one is the one that fits the Dell 3100):

http://www.pcpower.com/products/power_supplies/dell/

$110, though, but it should fit into the Dell without having to take a hacksaw to anything

If you look at your existing power supply, what does it list for 12V amps?

Not all PCI-e slots are equal... the one you need for graphics is a full slot length, not one that is about an inch long. Some manufacturers of MB's/Systems advertise a PCI-e slot, which is supposed to be 16x faster than a standard PCI slot, but then to save money, cut down the multipliers to say 4. Dell being one such company for some of its systems.

On SLi enabled systems, you will have 3 full length PCI-e slots, 2 will be the same colour and are rated at 8x, that is so 2 GC's can share the bandwidth but double the processor/memory advantages, the center (usually) one of the three, will be the full 16x PCI-e and a different colour.

The PCI-e slot that is about one inch long, is mainly used for extended port hosting cards, such as SATA.

Eep, good catch:

PCI x 1 • PCI Express x1 x 1

Looks like the OP is stuck with a PCI card.

PCIEx1 isn't a graphics slot.

http://www.dealtime.com/xPF-Dell-DELL-Dimension-3100-P4-2-8GHz-HT-512Mb-80GB-HD-DVD-RW-COMBO-10-100NIC-56K-MODEM

This is exactly what I used the AGP w/7600 and extra mem. on my old desktop that is now my back up. Works wonderful it had an AGP slot. However I did have to make sure the computer had enough watts to handle the card. If I am saying the terminology correctly.

It's a Dell.

Good point.

P2

wikipedia.com explains PCI and PCIe pretty well.

Simple, the 'e' means Express, which in real terms means it has multipliers applied to the data transfer bus. A 16 times multiplier means it can just about reach the speed required for SATA II (32mbps) controllers.

SATA II has a maximum transfer speed of 300MB/s. PCI-e 1.1 x16 has a maximum transfer speed of 4GB/s, and 2.0 x16 has a maximum transfer rate of 8GB/s. Certainly adequate for SATA : ).

You refer to mega BITS, I refer to mega BYTES..

I was talking in bytes.

If I were to talk in bits, then SATAII is capable of 3.0Gb/s (Gigabits per second), which is how it is generally referred to. 3.0Gb/s is 300MB/s (300 Megabytes per second).

As a point of reference, ATA-100 is capable of 100MB/s, and ATA-33 is capable of 33MB/s. Considering how long ago ATA-33 came around, SATAII would be a huge step backwards if it was only capable of 32MB/s : )

check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

3.0 Gb/s still isn't 32GB/s.

<Insert 'Hogwarts Express' joke here>

P2

who said 32gb/s?

See Post #15. Someone said SATAII (aka SATA300 ) was 32gb/s.

From the article you posted a link to:

3Gbits/s = 300Mbytes/sec, which is how SATAII is aka SATA300

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express


Note this says each direction, so the useful bandwidth is actually 500MB/s. Which is backed up by this Intel diagram, the PCIe x1 is 500MB/s, so even PCIex1 would be enough for a SATA interface.



(linked from http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/P35/index.htm)

Note, this is PCIe 1.1. which is what the ICH9 supports.

====

Now I'm curious, my other computer has a SATA300 that's old PCI, I wonder how that is supposed to actually support the throughput...

{edit} Smoke and mirrors, apparently. 32bit x 33 MHz is only 133MB/s {/edit}

Pretty much. SATAII on a PCI bus is limited to a theoretical 133MB/s. But, and it's a big but, you're assuming that you've got nothing else on the PCI bus. The bandwidth of the PCI bus is shared among everything on it, which can include graphics, network, audio, etc.

So you'll never reach 133MB/s with a PCI based controller (and in fact, it may cause performance issues, such as glitching audio).

I just keep the card and a spare sata drive around for ease of moving data to my main box.