PCI or PCI x1

pdc76

New Member
hey guys, back with another weird question. i bought a new pc for my daughter because she was complaining that her p4 2.4ghz box is too slow. it'll only take 1 gig of ddr and there's no video card slot at all. so i bought on ebay a p4 3.0ghz HT pc with 2 gigs ddr2. the problem is, there's no video card slot in this one either.

i know i should've asked first, but it's too late now. it was a deal at $96, so i'm gonna keep it. now there's 2 pci slots and a pci-x1 slot. i found X1550 cards in both slot types. would i be better off using the pci-x1 slot? more bandwidth? if it won't make a difference, i found an HD2400 Pro PCI card that i'd rather use.

what would be my best bet at this point? i'd like to use the pci-x1 slot if it'll be faster than the plain old pci slot, but if it won't make a difference, i'd prefer to use the dx10 card, unless it's not as fast as the x1550. HELP!
 
just found an 8400gs, and a 7300gt in the pcie-x1 flavor. now i'm even more undecided. can anyone recommend something?
 
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i've been reading up on the different slot speeds, as i was not getting an answer on here. i found a chart, i'll try to find it again and post a link.

anyway, it said the old pci slots had a bandwidth of 133mhz one way, the pcie-x1 slots were 250mhz in each direction for a total of 500mhz, all the way up to the x16 slots which would be 16x faster than the x1 slot. the express slots also do bus mastering, but regular pci doesn't.

am i looking at the wrong thing here, or are the express slots faster? because i found an 8400gs in the pcie-x1, but there are 8600gt's in the pci. they are just hard to find (haven't yet).
 
Get a pcie-x1 card...it will be faster then the PCI bus types. The fastest pci card is the x1550 from Ati. As far as i know there is no 8600gt in PCI form.
 
Get a pcie-x1 card...it will be faster then the PCI bus types. The fastest pci card is the x1550 from Ati. As far as i know there is no 8600gt in PCI form.
That just seems kinda. . "mean" in a way ha, that just one tiny single pci express lane is about twice as fast at that wide old pci lane. I dunno i thought it was goofy lookin. But ya if you have a choice go with the pci x1 slot instead.
 
i've been reading up on the different slot speeds, as i was not getting an answer on here. i found a chart, i'll try to find it again and post a link.

anyway, it said the old pci slots had a bandwidth of 133mhz one way, the pcie-x1 slots were 250mhz in each direction for a total of 500mhz, all the way up to the x16 slots which would be 16x faster than the x1 slot. the express slots also do bus mastering, but regular pci doesn't.

am i looking at the wrong thing here, or are the express slots faster? because i found an 8400gs in the pcie-x1, but there are 8600gt's in the pci. they are just hard to find (haven't yet).


A PCI slot has a top transfer of 133 MB/s. A PCIe X1 slot is 250 MB/s one way. Its not mhz. A PCI slot runs a 33.3 mhz. The PCIe bus runs at 100 mhz.
 
so there WOULD be a considerable difference in speed. sorry for the mhz instead of mb thing, i was trying to remember from a chart i saw the day before. the pcie-x1's do go in both directions, right? someone explained to me that it was better than the one direction pci, which would have to wait to go around, something like that.

any recommendations between the x1550 and the 8400gs? i'm not running vista, so the lack of dx10 on the x1550 doesn't matter to me.
 
Right a PCIe slot is bidirectional (if thats a word) sounds good. lol. Dont know between the X1550 and the 8400GS, never used either one. You could look up some bechmarks between them if there is any.
 
no one has pcie-x1 benchmarks. could i look at the x16 benchmarks? i mean, they should still show the comparison, right? toms hardware doesn't have both cards as far as i could find. are there any other sites with comparison charts out there?
 
it's an HP Compaq DC5100. pentium 4 3.00Ghz HT, 2 Gb ddr2, intel board. it has pci's and 1 pcie-x1, that's it. came out of an office. i should've asked first, i just assumed with ddr2 that it would've had an x16 slot. go figure.
 
What computer did you buy that doesn't have a video card slot?
His computer does. . . He said he had 2 PCI and 1 1x PCIe slot, he said it in his first post? That's crazy tho about the albatron link, thought PCI was done done, they're still kinda. . . done tho. Are those cards on the market yet. Just wonderin bout the price they were puttin up
 
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