PCI Express card in PCI slot

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sirheck

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Feb 24, 2006
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probably the best pci cards are the nvidia fx 5 seires
i have an fx 5200 in my girlfriends dell demension and call of duty 2
looks the same as it does on my comp with a 6800gt
and i was stumped until i found that cod2 on the dell switches to dx7.0
then i manually set it to dx9.0 and it still looks good if you like
pictures because it is not playable in dx9 but it is smooth and
looks good under dx7 we have a radeon card in our comp at work
it is agp but it is not dx9 compliant
 

Frank_M

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NOOB question - My motherboard does not have a PCI-Express slot, only PCI. Will a PCI-Express card work in this slot?
No.
They are even different size.
Pci-cards are old and weak. Some might support dx8, but not dx9 - some newer (heck, dx9 has been around for 4-5 years, no? Then some not old) games will not run on it, or start running and then crash.

Get a new pc.
Dell is for dorks.
 

nottheking

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NOOB question - My motherboard does not have a PCI-Express slot, only PCI. Will a PCI-Express card work in this slot?
Even though they sound alike, and indeed, the slots may even LOOK a little alike, rest assured that they are COMPLETELY incompatible.

While thye share a similar array of "pins" in the center, it's the way they USE them that's different.

To put it in short, PCI is a "parallel" interface, meaning that it uses ALL of the pins for each signal pulse; using them, it can transfer up to 32 bits at a time. Given that PCI operates at 33MHz, that yields a potential maximum transfer rate of 133 MB a second.

PCI-e, in spite of the name, is a "serial" interface, meaning that it uses multiple independent channels; (called "lanes" here) for a PCI-e graphics card, there are 16 of them: hence, that "PCI-e x16" or "PCI-e x1" names you might've seen listed the numberl of lanes that slot had. Each lane can only transfer one single BIT at once, but they can then run at absurdly high speeds; I believe it's 2,500 MHz (2.5GHz) for PCI-e. Because some "overhead" (error correction, etc.) are figured in, it works out to an effective 2,000 MHz, for 250MB a second PER LANE, or a total of about 4GB per second for a PCI-e x16 graphics card.

As you would now realize,it's technically impossible to get one to work with the other, and, unless I did a bad job of explaining, you might understand why.

Now, back toward the REASON for your question... You have no PCI-e slots. However, might you have an AGP slot? Those may technically be "outdated," but are QUITE usable for even today's high-end gaming. Cards are more expensive for them, though. Note that a PC can have only one AGP slot; it will USUALLY be tan or brown, and ALWAYS be the one located closest to the CPU.

If you don't have an AGP slot either, then you're in trouble. there ARE graphics cards for ordinary PCI still around, but they are over-priced, and simply don't match today's cards in any way. Your best bet would be some nVidia GeForce FX cards; the 5200, 5500, and 5700LE are still not TOO hard to find for PCI. There was also the FX 5600, but that was discontinued long ago. I've also heard suggestions that there's a PCI version of the GeForce 6200; if it does indeed exist, that would be your best bet, hands-down.

However, with only PCI graphics, don't expect TOO MUCH. I've personally gone quite far with using some of my PCI graphics, and even played some more recent games, but they would never come close to just about any of my AGP cards.
 

sirheck

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i actually saw on overclockers or guruof 3d i cant remember where
but there was a pic of some one who sawed of the hook of a 7800gt
and tried to make it work in a pci slot the guy wrote saying that he got
it to fit but then he had no video
he even said < i cut the card very carfully as to not damage it so that
it would fit in the pci slot>
now that is intelligence lol
 

enforcerfx

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Uh, No. if you need a cheap video card, Newegg.com offers PCI video cards, best i saw was a 6200TC 64MB onboard video memory for only 27 bucks, i think i might get it for my old win98 junk linux server :D
 

pjcnet

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You can buy a Pentium 4 PC as cheap as £40 these days, see http://www.speedie.co.uk but when visiting, they have far more than what's advertised on-line as they have a large warehouse which masses of PCs coming in every day by the van load. I'm lucky enough to live nearby the depot, but you can call and have a system delivered.

With a Pentium 4, you usually at least get an AGP slot and on EBAY you can buy a reasonable 3D video cards very cheap, but watch out as you may end up with an AGP x4 slot or worse instead of an AGP x8 which is the latest AGP. Many AGP x8 graphics cards work in AGP x4 slots, but not all. if the AGP slot is slower than x4 it runs under a different voltage and most cards then won't work.

If you are stuck with an old style PCI card, then unless you are lucky on Ebay, you will pay through the nose for a video card which is terrible in comparison to newer cards and even most AGP cards. It may run some moderns games, but you'll have to turn all the special effects down along with the screen resolution ETC. Even then you are likely to get a poor refresh rate which will get even worse when lots of objects are displayed on the screen at once.

A PC without even an AGP card is likely to be something very outdated. At best it likely to have a Celeron Processor running at 1GHZ or slower or perhaps a Pentium 3 or worse. These processors are much poorer in every way to modern processors, even without considering the clock speeds. When modern PCs have much faster dual core or quad core processors, a single core 1GHZ processor or worse is extremely slow. It will probably use SDRAM which is older than DDR1 memory and runs at 66MHZ or 100MHZ when the latest DD3 memory can run at 800MHZ (both ways 1600MHZ). Most machines that take old SDRAM have only 2 slots and only have a maximum memory of 512MB which is again very poor as most modern PCs have 2GB or more. If you have SDRAM and have even less than 512MB, you will often pay through the nose again to upgrade.

As you can see, you might as well replace your very old PC if you intend to play modern games.
 
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