Stupid Questions!

[Tetsueo]

Ok I'm thinking of ordering a graphics card from an American online store and I have two questions...

Firstly will a PCI Express video card work in a standard PCI slot, or is there some new motherboards with these slots the card uses.

Secondly will the difference in the voltage the card uses cause problems on a British comp?

These are probably stupid questions to ask, but i thought i'd play it safe and ask before i go and spend any money.

 

[Elbatrop1]

PCI Express can't work in a regular PCI slot, and yes new motherboards are using PCI-X.

 

[Tetsueo]

Whats with the new PCI slots then...are they better than AGP ?

 

[TheMajor]

Yes, but the current cards aren't better than 8x AGP cards.

 

[TheMajor]

BTW, PCI-X is just a faster version of PCI. A normal PCI card will fit in. PCI-E has very small slots though.

 

[m3incorp]

Tetsueo, are you a gamer, graphic designer, CAD user? To upgrade you are going to need a motherboard that has PCI-X, possibly another CPU that works with motherboard (currently only Intel ) and everything else that this intels (pun not intended). You do know that the cheapest PCI-X cards are running in the US $500 range.

 

[TheMajor]

Tetsueo, are you a gamer, graphic designer, CAD user? To upgrade you are going to need a motherboard that has PCI-X, possibly another CPU that works with motherboard (currently only Intel ) and everything else that this intels (pun not intended). You do know that the cheapest PCI-X cards are running in the US $500 range.

I did a google and it looks like only the socket 940 mobo's have PCI-x (Opteron)
I don't know wich Intel mobo's have PCI-x but it looks its mostly for servers (Xeon/Itanium).
PCI-E only comes with some Intel mobo's I think.

http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/chipsets_d/AMD/8000+PCI-X/

http://www.ibase-i.com.tw/afw3000.htm

 

[Tetsueo]

I'm a gamer...I've recently bought Doom 3 and my 256mb geforce fx card just isnt cutting it. The game itself will play fine at the lowest possible resolution which is 640x480 i think. But i would like to play at least 800x600...so i'm thinking a vid card upgrade is needed, but the pci-x cards are not an option now.

 

[m3incorp]

There are some great AGP video cards out there, it's basically what your budget allows.

 

[Tetsueo]

What i'm basically looking for is to be able to play the latest games such as Doom 3 at the 800x600 resolution without haveing to turn off every graphic option....I mean Doom 3 will play brilliantly at 640x480 with all graphical options enabled accept for anti-aliasing which is something i've never bothered with to start with.