Choosing expasion slot for expansion card

[AMHTechnician]

Hello. I'm new here. Need your help guys. Here's what are bugging me:

How can you tell which slot to use for each cards? Are there any criteria?

What are these 5v and 3.3v for PCIe? And why is it important? Also there are these 33bit and 66bit? What are these and their importance? And these x1, x4, x8, x16 PCIe, I already know that simply speaking, those numbers represent the numbers of data lane connection of the slot, but I don't really know what are their specific differences.

 

[Geoff]

All you need to worry about for PCI-E is the revision and speed, such as PCI-E x16 2.0 or PCI-E x16 3.0. As you already noted, x1, x4, x8, and x16 are different speeds, but they are also physically different size slots. An x16 slot is the longest and can accept any expansion card x16 or lower, such as x8 or x1.

 

[AMHTechnician]

All you need to worry about for PCI-E is the revision and speed, such as PCI-E x16 2.0 or PCI-E x16 3.0. As you already noted, x1, x4, x8, and x16 are different speeds, but they are also physically different size slots. An x16 slot is the longest and can accept any expansion card x16 or lower, such as x8 or x1.

Thanks for the response. So how to compute for the speed? So any expansion cards are compatible with PCIe? If so, why are there books/articles saying PCI slots are still useful and necessary today?

 

[StrangleHold]

What do you mean, compute for the speed? No not all expansion cards are compatible with PCIe. Only PCIe cards as explained by Geoff above. But yeah, PCI cards/slots are still useful. They still make the cards plus if you still have a PCI card. Motherboard manufactures still put PCI slots on boards. They still put ISA slots on boards for awhile after PCI came out. Still put AGP slots on boards for awhile after PCIe came out. Same with PCI slots after PCIe came out. PCI slots are just hanging out longer because a lot of cards were made for PCI, unlike AGP which was only for video cards.

 

[Geoff]

Thanks for the response. So how to compute for the speed? So any expansion cards are compatible with PCIe? If so, why are there books/articles saying PCI slots are still useful and necessary today?

I'm talking about PCI-E expansion slots, not PCI. Those are completely separate and not compatible with PCI-E.

 

[beers]

Thanks for the response. So how to compute for the speed? So any expansion cards are compatible with PCIe? If so, why are there books/articles saying PCI slots are still useful and necessary today?

What expansion cards are you actually looking at getting?

Most old PCI cards have been replaced by PCIe. There are still boards that come with both and some useful PCI cards that don't have a PCIe variant.

PCI and PCIe are completely different buses (same way ISA and PCI are completely different, or AGP and PCIe are different).