Both PCI and PCI-E cards on P55 mobo?

[koblek]

Hi all,
So, I just put a PCI Nvidia 6200 in my P7P55D-E LX as a secondary video card to drive a third monitor and my computer is super slow now: boot takes much longer and there's a lot of stuttering when moving windows around. The primary card is a GTX 285 in the solitary PCI-E slot (Windows 7 64bit). I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers before installing the 6200, then reinstalled the latest WHQL drivers after installing the card.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether this is due to the secondary card being PCI and slowing the whole system down which I will have to live with or is this a driver issue? I've read of issues with multiple non-SLI/crossfire configurations when both cards have same type chipset (ATI or NVIDIA). Would it be worth taking the 6200 back and getting an ATI PCI card?

 

[uncfan_2563]

why dont you just pull it out and see if the problem keeps happening...

 

[hunter315]

How did you find 64 bit drivers for the 6200? The more recent drivers likely lack support for the 6200 so i bet on it being a driver issue, i know window's 7 is supposed to have support to do multiple display drivers but im not sure how to set it up. You may not be able to use the 6200 if you cant find a 64 bit driver for it.

 

[koblek]

why dont you just pull it out and see if the problem keeps happening...

I do know that the slowness is caused by the second card being in the system. When I pull the PCI card out, it's fine. But I want to keep a second video card so I can drive 3 displays. What I'm trying to figure out is whether the slowness is due to one of the following:

1) Some type of conflict with having both a PCI-E and PCI card in the same system. If that's the case, I might just deal with it.

or

2) A driver conflict issue. The latest Nvidia drivers installed just fine and Nvidia's site states that the 6XXX series is supported by the driver, but I'm concerned that Windows might "think" that the same driver that the 285 uses is just fine for the 6200. I guess getting a PCI ATI card would sort this out.

or

3) maybe a 6200 really is just a crappy card. If it's just that it's a crap card, I'll trade it in for an 8400 PCI card.

 

[koblek]

Quick update:
So, I overclocked the 6200 by about 30% and the performance is noticeably improved. I want to clarify, that slowdown would only occur when resizing/moving windows on the monitor driven by the 6200.
I think this tells me that it's just a slow crappy card that has trouble with Aero in Windows 7. I think I will take back the 6200 and get the 8400 I should have picked up in the first place. I will report back later on the results.

 

[koblek]

I went by Microcenter and exchanged the 6200 for an 8400GS. I think that's the fastest PCI card available. The lag is still there but not very noticeable. I guess the 6200 just couldn't keep up with Aero.

 

[jives11]

I did some work on PCI cards a while back, blogged here :



http://mr-ives.blogspot.com/search/label/PCI

You are probably right in your assessment, but you might want to look at PCI latency. My work was all 32-bit on XP but some things might be of interest.