Maximum PC

sooo needing to upgrade my dinosaur ( 2.6 gig Pen. D, 1 gig ddr2 ram, bfg 7300gt on agp x8 ) my mobo has a pci-e x1 slot that can be used for graphics instead of the agp x8 and having a hard time finding a card that is above the specs of a 7300gt now if i got a lower end card would it be the same or faster with a pci-e x1 slot??

Are you sure its not a riser slot?

Yeh, AGP boards didn't have PCIe...that's why they had AGP. Some had riser slots that fit proprietary riser cards for video and sound, but it wasn't PCIe. If it's a brown slot, it's not PCIe and shouldn't try to run things off it.

Even if I'm completely wrong, you're better off with a newer board that supports PCIe standards. All I have to go off of is an Abit board with an AMR slot that looks like a PCIe x4 slot. Nothing works in it but AMR devices.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/46

yes i am very sure that it is a pcie x1 it is a asus p5vdc-mx it is set up for ddr1 and ddr2 ram plus like i said it has agp 8x and pcie x1 and in the bios it gives me the option to switch between agp and pcie

well, to answer your question, no, there aren't really any good PCIe x1 cards. PCIe x1 only has a little more bandwidth than PCI, so its really not for GPUs. I would get and AGP 8X card, there's plenty of decent AGP cards around. Honestly, your CPU is going to bottleneck near any modern card that isn't rock-bottom. The Radeon HD 4650 is considerably faster than a 7300GT and anything higher will certainly cause a bottleneck, resulting in no better performance.

Wow that's a funky little board.. never seen PCI-E and AGP on the same board before!

Biostar had a AGP/PCi-E x16 combo on the same board back then. It wasn't perfect, but jack-of-all-trade stuff usually isn't.

thanks!! but one other problem then the user guide for my mobo says that i need a agp card that is keyed for 1.5 volts instead of 3 so it needs 2 keyed spaces on the agp connector and all i found on newegg were the 3 volt cards and i know they are out there cuz my 7300gt bfg has the 2 keyed spaces for 1.5 so yeah i know the best thing to do would be just to build a new rig but money is tight

If your mobo needs a 1.5V card, you're really out of luck. There are no modern 1.5V AGP cards, the 7300GT is about the fastest 1.5V AGP card out there.

thanks alot for the help now i am very sure that i am just going to get a new mobo the final nail has been put in the coffin on upgrades so to speak

His board should be 1.5v. The first (old) version of AGP used 3v and they moved to 1.5v. The warning is to inform you that ancient 3v cards won't work. There was a short period of time where they both existed and putting a new 1.5v card in an old 3v slot burnt up the new card very quickly. Same again with all AGP cards being .8V and would fry if they weren't keyed to fit.

AGP 1.0 cards are 3v, and you will not find these
AGP 2.0 (x4) cards are 1.5v and take the two keyed slots
AGP 3.0 (x8 side banding) are .8v and are the most common

Looks like you're back to the PCIe x1 slot, and just see a few 4350's. If that VisionTek is in-stock anywhere else, I'd give that one a shot...if you're not planning on a build in the next year. Hate to throw money at this thing.

http://www.asrock.de/mb/overview.asp?Mo ... Dual-SATA2

Just to make everyone look foolish. HEHEHE!

PCIe and AGP with S775 on the same board.

Huh? From post one, we seen the p5vdc-mx existed. The Via 8xx was just a freak of nature and didn't mean to come off like it's impossible. It sure as hell wasn't a standard and why I asked if he was sure it wasn't a riser. Via brought along a lot of hangover blues with these things though. Same with DDR2/DDR3 boards or any vendor that sat on the fence with a standard switch.

It wasn't a mystery, just covering the bases with the info given at the time. AGR sure looked like they were PCIe slots.