I want to run a dual display setup in my office but the computer have a integrated intel with only one vga out and the motherboard only has a PCI-e x1 slot available. Can I stick a x16 card in to a x1 slot and force it to work in x1 mode? I can't find PCI-e x1 graphic cards in any store in my country (sweden).
Actually, if the end of the X1 slot is open (so a longer card can fit in) then it will probably work.
All the pins of the x1 slot are duplicated on the x4, x8 and x16, in the same locations. The additional lanes are added by repeating the data lines the appropriate number of times to support the increased width of the slot.
Some tests have been done using an x16 card and taping off some of the pins to get it down to x4 (they didn't go lower, I believe, because they were testing scaling on the port to see how far they could go before suffering performance hits on the system).
I too have a PCI Express x1 slot and would like to use a PCI 16x card, the price difference is huge - $100 + for PCI 1x and $25 for PCI 16x. That is for 256MB of video RAM.
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