Zotac Offering GeForce GT 520 for Classic PCI Slots

Tuesday Zotac said it plans to release PCI and PCI Express x1 cards based on Nvidia's GeForce GT 520 GPU. For those with (really) old systems -- especially those still sporting an AGP slot -- this is an ideal way to beef up the graphics to DirectX 11 levels without having to shell out money for an all-new barebone system.

"Upgrading your graphics card is the easiest way to boost your system performance and gain new capabilities. The new Zotac GeForce GT 520 PCI and PCI Express x1 graphics cards shows that you can experience good graphics without upgrading the rest of your system," said Carsten Berger, marketing director, Zotac International.

Both cards will come packed with DVI, HDMI and VGA outputs with dual simultaneous independent display support for an instant dual-monitor upgrade. The cards will also be clocked at 810 MHz and feature 48 unified shaders, a shader clock of 1620 MHz, 512 MB of DDR3 memory, a memory clock of 1333 MHz and a 64-bit memory interface. They're also hardware accelerated Blu-ray ready and support Shader Model 5.0.

So far pricing and availability is unknown, but similar cards with 1 GB of DDR3 and a PCI Express 2.0 x16 interface cost around $57 to $60 USD on Newegg.

  • Darkerson
    Wow. Rocking the old PCI slot. Im surprised they didnt offer an AGP version as well.
    Reply
  • Lutfij
    hmmm sounds .... intersting.
    Reply
  • iam2thecrowe
    great, now i can upgrade my pentium mmx 200mhz to dx11 capable video.....ditch the 2 x voodoo2 sli.......
    Reply
  • mister g
    If you're upgrading really old systems then an AGP card would be a better fit. All the entry level cards would not be bottlenecked on the PCI slot anyway.
    Reply
  • Pyree
    PCI 5450 got competition!
    Reply
  • atikkur
    yea.. why not agp instead? theres agp when pci is arround. the only system that has pci only was pentium 1. (
    Reply
  • Thunderfox
    Wow. I guess if you're stuck with an old POS OEM machine with no AGP slot, this is at least an option. Of course, setting such a machine on fire might be a better option.
    Reply
  • dtemple
    As recently as 2006 there were OEM systems with no AGP slot, and PCI only. I've seen them with higher-end 533FSB P4's. Not that a GT520 would really perform all that well on a system like that, but $60 is a lot better than $350 if your graphics card fails. And it doesn't hurt that it's DX11, cuz new systems still have PCI and it would be able to drive a second monitor when the person in that situation finally does get a new system.
    Reply
  • demonhorde665
    DarkersonWow. Rocking the old PCI slot. Im surprised they didnt offer an AGP version as well.

    not sure but i think this is because teh way dx 11 communicates with the computer , it' needs a shared buss system , agp does not share a bus , also keep in mind the intention might also be to to SLI the cards , soemthing that also can only be done on a shared bus like old PCI or PCI-E
    Reply
  • demonhorde665
    ThunderfoxWow. I guess if you're stuck with an old POS OEM machine with no AGP slot, this is at least an option. Of course, setting such a machine on fire might be a better option.set on fire NAH never , you forget the useful ness of old systems for old games , hell i'm still looking for a copy of win 95 i misplaced so i can do a dual boot on my system to play gmaes that don't play in win xp or win 7. imagine rockign those old games with win 95/98 and this video card on an intel P4 yah for nostaglia gaming !

    on second thought though steam does offer many odl gmaes that work great on even 64 bit versions of win 7

    and your comment was funny as hell !
    Reply