Need some advice with MoBo and PCIx

[TocNSA]

So I got a new CPU and MoBo with AGP and PCIx slots with DDR and DDR2 slots for RAM. I have an FX 5900XT AGP now and was planning to upgrade to a PCIx card and DDR2 RAM later this year.

The problem is after I got it I realized the PCIx slot was max x4 speed. This really pisses me off for one since it said it had PCI Express X16 slot but I come to find that is the name of the slot not the speed. Grrr. So after looking around some more I see that all AGP/PCIx MoBo's are all slower than X16.

So my question is two fold.

A. Just how well will a 7600 GT or comparable card run on a x4 speed PCIx?

B. Should I take the motherboard back and get a faster PCIx or just live with the x4 speed PCIx?

Any help or links would be great.

After I found out about the PCIx speed thing I did some research but everything seems so vauge. I think these computer companies love to make things confusing so consumers can make bad decisions :\

Thanks,

Dave

 

[shadowduck]

So I got a new CPU and MoBo with AGP and PCIx slots with DDR and DDR2 slots for RAM. I have an FX 5900XT AGP now and was planning to upgrade to a PCIx card and DDR2 RAM later this year.

The problem is after I got it I realized the PCIx slot was max x4 speed. This really pisses me off for one since it said it had PCI Express X16 slot but I come to find that is the name of the slot not the speed. Grrr. So after looking around some more I see that all AGP/PCIx MoBo's are all slower than X16.

So my question is two fold.

A. Just how well will a 7600 GT or comparable card run on a x4 speed PCIx?

B. Should I take the motherboard back and get a faster PCIx or just live with the x4 speed PCIx?

Any help or links would be great.

After I found out about the PCIx speed thing I did some research but everything seems so vauge. I think these computer companies love to make things confusing so consumers can make bad decisions :\

Thanks,

Dave

You mean PCI-E (PCI-X is yet another type of PCI slots that is 64-bit and mainly for servers).

Telling people what motherboard you have would vastly help the situation. Give us your entire rig while you are at it.

Your statement is not even true, as I have suc ha motherboard and the PCI-E slot is in fact full 16x.

More information will be helpful, but I dont think you will have issues.

 

[Detson]

We need more info; what board are you using? What processor? I know for a fact that ASrock sells a motherboard that offers a very capable socket 939 (AMD) solution to the PCI-E and AGP dilemma. You mentioned ddr2 ram; what processor are you planning to upgrade to down the line?

 

[flasher702]

You may also be interested to know that is PCI-E 16x is not "faster" then 4x. It just has more lanes, and hence the larger slot with more contacts. You certainly can have a 16x physical connector where only some of the lanes are usable (ex: dual 16x GFX cards in SLI mode don't use 32 lanes total, when SLI first came out no motherboard chipsets even had that many lanes), but I don't think a 16x GFX card would even fit in a 4x slot (I've never tried it though, if someone else has and it works let me know). Appearantly the GFX cards will run with only 4 lanes, but you're looking at 1/4th the bandwidth, some games will suffer from this but bandwidth wasn't really much of an issue even back in the AGP 4x days. PCI-E 16x vs. 4x isn't like AGP 8x/4x/2x all running on the same bus, but at different speeds. It's additional physical traces on the motherboard hooked into additional logic in the NB chipset that gives 16x more bandwidth than 4x.

(edited accuracy and clarity)

I wouldn't buy this mobo if I were planning on putting a 16x PCI-E GFX card in it. What's teh point in buying a motherboard to allow for an upgrade to a PCI-E GFX card if that upgrade is going to be crippled?

 

[TocNSA]

Sorry for lack of info.. here we go.

MoBo: Asus VIA PT880 Ultra,LGA 775, DualCore,DDR2/DDR,AGP,PCIex16,sRAID,w/Sound,w/LAN. [ P5VDC-X ]

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 531, LGA 775, 3.0GHz, 64-Bit, 1MB L2 Cache

Current Video Card: AGP FX 5900XT 128 mb


Doing some research I found this site: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1087&page=3 and there it said:

"...To further depreciate the value of your very expensive AGP cards, PCI Express X16 and 8x AGP slots cannot coexist properly on the same motherboard. This fact has not stopped various motherboard manufacturers from releasing ersatz PCIe/AGP solutions that use the PCI bus or part of the PCI Express bus..."

I wanted to take my time upgrading from DDR to DDR2 and AGP to PCIe, I guess it's not worth it.

 

[shadowduck]

Sorry for lack of info.. here we go.

MoBo: Asus VIA PT880 Ultra,LGA 775, DualCore,DDR2/DDR,AGP,PCIex16,sRAID,w/Sound,w/LAN. [ P5VDC-X ]

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 531, LGA 775, 3.0GHz, 64-Bit, 1MB L2 Cache

Current Video Card: AGP FX 5900XT 128 mb


Doing some research I found this site: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1087&page=3 and there it said:

"...To further depreciate the value of your very expensive AGP cards, PCI Express X16 and 8x AGP slots cannot coexist properly on the same motherboard. This fact has not stopped various motherboard manufacturers from releasing ersatz PCIe/AGP solutions that use the PCI bus or part of the PCI Express bus..."

I wanted to take my time upgrading from DDR to DDR2 and AGP to PCIe, I guess it's not worth it.

That article is from 2003. 3 years ago is 2413597 years in computer terms. I don't think AsRock would lie about the specs on their boards which say FULL 16x PCI-E slot.

 

[Detson]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813157097

The ULi chipset in the above product allows for both AGP and PCI-E x16.

Intel 775 motherboards all, as far as I can see, only include a 4x pci-e slot. I doubt this will hurt your frame-rates all that much; most modern graphics cards haven't even managed to saturate the x8 pci-e bus for single gpu setups. If the Newegg customer reviews are to be believed, your card should fit in the slot just fine. So: buy an upgrader mobo and put up with the bandwidth limit, ditch your graphics card, or ditch your processor and get an AMD.

 

[TocNSA]

Thanks for the help everyone, you really helped me make a decision.