What's the difference between PCI and PCI-E

[hesson81]

I tried to take an old video card out of one of my computers and put into my girl friends Demension 3000, the card I tried to put into her computer is a:

RADEON 7000 Series AGP (0x5159)

But What I found out, is it didn't physically go into her mother board. I Think I would call them pins (part that snaps into mother board) stretched further than the slot would recieve it.

Is the card a PCI-E, or is that so wrong? I want to get a video card for her computer that will be compatible with her Mother board.

thanks
Jeff

 

[veg1992]

You could just run CPU-Z on her PC, and it tells you what kind of slot it has, but it its longer than AGP its probably PCI-e

 

[hesson81]

Alright, I have CPU-Z on her Comp, well because she doesn't have a video card it doens't say PCI or PCI-e, I ran it on My Computer because I know I have a Geforce video card, it says PCI-E ( I just havn'e opened my computer to look at it yet.

I see six options:

CPU, Cache, Mainboard, Memory, SPD, About

Which shall I check??

 

[veg1992]

Mainboard I think

 

[hesson81]

Yea there isn't anything on the Mainbaord that says what the Mother board would take, I think if the computer has one it will tell you what it is.

 

[veedubfreak]

Pci is when you go inside to get your video card.
Pci-e is when you use the drivethrough.

Heh sorry had to. Pci-e is just a faster version of pci. PCI slots are almost always white, while Pci-e slots are usually black/blue/orange, depending on what brand of motherboard it is.

 

[hesson81]

I see, so why is it, in my old computer, (one with Radeon Video card) does Have a card slot (brown color, PCI-E?) that is actually not aligned with the other two PCI slots. More specifically, even if PCI-E slot are different colors, are they still alligned with the other PCI slot because this one isn't.

I took a picture of the mother board, wish I could up load them so you could see what I'm talking about.

You think any PCI vide card I find would work in the Demension 3000???

Thanks again.

Jeff

I think If I'm doing this right I found the URL I hope the PIC comes up, if it does, you see the Brown slot on the mother board, You see how it seems to be about an inch to the right of the other PCI slot, that's where my Radeon card is at. Is that a PCI-E slot???

Here's the URL if the Image doesn't post:

http://www.pacificgeek.com/productimages/xl/GE-PRO-M2-R.jpg

CARD IMAGE URL:

http://www.oktal.ro/produse/foto/1342_SAPPHIRE_7000.jpg

 

[veedubfreak]

Thats AGP, which is what most video cards were before the advent of pci-e.

 

[blackhawk13]

There's a guy in another thread that is upgrading his Dimension 3000, and after some research, I'm pretty sure they only have PCI slots on the motherboards. Anyways, as Veedub said that card is an AGP card... AGP != PCI and it won't fit (so you found out). If you wanted to upgrade, you would have to buy a new card for it.

Edit: It turns out that you were that guy. Go figure eh? Lol.

 

[Apokalipse]

Pci-e is just a faster version of pci.

yeah, about 10 times faster per lane
(a 16X slot has 16 lanes)

Also, PCI-E lanes are serial, not paralell.
you can have multiple PCI-E lanes (and usually do), but each PCI-E lane is independent from other lanes (ie bytes of data aren't split between lanes/paths like in PCI)