PCI slots

[Profound_pessimism]

I have a Dell Dimension 5150 that I'm upgrading. So far the specs are as follows:
Intel Pentium 4 (3.20ghz single core with hyperthreading)
4gb ram
Nvidia NVS 300 graphics card

I'm trying to think of ways I could expand the IO and I'm really interested in filling these PCI slots. I've got a 16x, a 1x and two 8x slots. I've filled the 16x with a graphics card and I'm thinking of getting a usb expansion card for one of the other slots. I just wondered whatever uses there are for the PCI slots. The only applications I can think of are:
more USB ports
graphics card
sound card (does anyone still use these?)
Thunderbolt port
Network adapter

Am I missing anything blindingly obvious? I want to know more! Tell me about the wackiest applications for PCI slots!

 

[PP Mguire]

I have a Dell Dimension 5150 that I'm upgrading. So far the specs are as follows:
Intel Pentium 4 (3.20ghz single core with hyperthreading)
4gb ram
Nvidia NVS 300 graphics card

I'm trying to think of ways I could expand the IO and I'm really interested in filling these PCI slots. I've got a 16x, a 1x and two 8x slots. I've filled the 16x with a graphics card and I'm thinking of getting a usb expansion card for one of the other slots. I just wondered whatever uses there are for the PCI slots. The only applications I can think of are:
more USB ports
graphics card
sound card (does anyone still use these?)
Thunderbolt port
Network adapter

Am I missing anything blindingly obvious? I want to know more! Tell me about the wackiest applications for PCI slots!

The fact that it's a Penium 4.
Board has a 16x slot, a 1x slot, and 2 standard PCI slots. The 16x and 1x slots are both PCI-E 1.0 and because they're so close together if you put a GPU in the 16x slot it makes the 1x slot worthless. Both PCI slots are available to use but due to it being a slow and old Pentium 4 (and old platform) PCI devices could actually bog down this processor like they did in old times. I honestly can't remember if the chipset handled the PCI throughput by 2006. Due to the age of the machine Thunderbolt is out of the question. You could get a gigabit ethernet card for PCI but if you transferred any files at full speed it would cap your PCI bus. Onboard audio was abysmal back then so a sound card would probably do good too.

So if this was an old machine I had kicking around and I just wanted to make it an XP box or whatever (I like old games) I would do this.

Single slot GPU (true single slot) - Probably 8800GT or Radeon 4850
PCI- E 1x USB3 card (even for nice machines these come in handy sometimes)
PCI Intel Gigabit card
PCI X-Fi sound card (Extreme Music or Fatal1ty Pro)

Ditch the Pentium 4 in favor of a Core 2 Duo (e6600) and mash 3GB of DDR2 667 in there.

Edit: Just read the 945G documents, everything is handle by the chipset.

 

[Profound_pessimism]

The fact that it's a Penium 4.
Board has a 16x slot, a 1x slot, and 2 standard PCI slots. The 16x and 1x slots are both PCI-E 1.0 and because they're so close together if you put a GPU in the 16x slot it makes the 1x slot worthless. Both PCI slots are available to use but due to it being a slow and old Pentium 4 (and old platform) PCI devices could actually bog down this processor like they did in old times. I honestly can't remember if the chipset handled the PCI throughput by 2006. Due to the age of the machine Thunderbolt is out of the question. You could get a gigabit ethernet card for PCI but if you transferred any files at full speed it would cap your PCI bus. Onboard audio was abysmal back then so a sound card would probably do good too.

So if this was an old machine I had kicking around and I just wanted to make it an XP box or whatever (I like old games) I would do this.

Single slot GPU (true single slot) - Probably 8800GT or Radeon 4850
PCI- E 1x USB3 card (even for nice machines these come in handy sometimes)
PCI Intel Gigabit card
PCI X-Fi sound card (Extreme Music or Fatal1ty Pro)

Ditch the Pentium 4 in favor of a Core 2 Duo (e6600) and mash 3GB of DDR2 667 in there.

Edit: Just read the 945G documents, everything is handle by the chipset.

I've got an audio interface so I have no need for a soundcard thankfully. I'm not intending to do any intense work on this machine or anything, not trying to play PUBG or render 4k video. I pretty much just use it as a secondary pc for web browsing and stuff, I'm just wondering how far I can push it you know? Thank you very much for your help

 

[Profound_pessimism]

The fact that it's a Penium 4.
Board has a 16x slot, a 1x slot, and 2 standard PCI slots. The 16x and 1x slots are both PCI-E 1.0 and because they're so close together if you put a GPU in the 16x slot it makes the 1x slot worthless. Both PCI slots are available to use but due to it being a slow and old Pentium 4 (and old platform) PCI devices could actually bog down this processor like they did in old times. I honestly can't remember if the chipset handled the PCI throughput by 2006. Due to the age of the machine Thunderbolt is out of the question. You could get a gigabit ethernet card for PCI but if you transferred any files at full speed it would cap your PCI bus. Onboard audio was abysmal back then so a sound card would probably do good too.

So if this was an old machine I had kicking around and I just wanted to make it an XP box or whatever (I like old games) I would do this.

Single slot GPU (true single slot) - Probably 8800GT or Radeon 4850
PCI- E 1x USB3 card (even for nice machines these come in handy sometimes)
PCI Intel Gigabit card
PCI X-Fi sound card (Extreme Music or Fatal1ty Pro)

Ditch the Pentium 4 in favor of a Core 2 Duo (e6600) and mash 3GB of DDR2 667 in there.

Edit: Just read the 945G documents, everything is handle by the chipset.

What are the benefits of the Core 2 Duo e6600 compared to the pentium 4? I was surprised at how much punch the pentium 4 packed given the age of the PC. I don't know much about processors but from what I can see the specs are as follows
Core 2 Duo e6600:
2.40GHz
1066MHz FSB
4MB cache
dual core

Pentium 4:
3.20GHz
800MHz FSB
1MB cache
Single core with HT (acts like a dual core)

To be fair the core 2 duo looks a lot better on paper but I don't know much about caches and stuff in processor, I've fallen prey to "the megahertz myth". Would I notice the difference? Also, if all the PCI throughput is handled by the chipset presumably this wouldn't make a difference to my PCI performance (not that it makes much difference to me because I only have one card installed and I use this PC lightly)

 

[Profound_pessimism]

Just done some light reading and realised that having multiple pcie controllers plugged in won't bog down my processor, am I correct? If so, this is good news

 

[PP Mguire]

I've got an audio interface so I have no need for a soundcard thankfully. I'm not intending to do any intense work on this machine or anything, not trying to play PUBG or render 4k video. I pretty much just use it as a secondary pc for web browsing and stuff, I'm just wondering how far I can push it you know? Thank you very much for your help

Realistically you won't be doing any kind of real modern computing on this stuff, especially on a Pentium 4. They're just too slow. I mentioned what I would do, not necessarily what I recommended you do as that's up to you. I always prefer a good sound card and the less on the USB bus the better IMO.

What are the benefits of the Core 2 Duo e6600 compared to the pentium 4? I was surprised at how much punch the pentium 4 packed given the age of the PC. I don't know much about processors but from what I can see the specs are as follows
Core 2 Duo e6600:
2.40GHz
1066MHz FSB
4MB cache
dual core

Pentium 4:
3.20GHz
800MHz FSB
1MB cache
Single core with HT (acts like a dual core)

To be fair the core 2 duo looks a lot better on paper but I don't know much about caches and stuff in processor, I've fallen prey to "the megahertz myth". Would I notice the difference? Also, if all the PCI throughput is handled by the chipset presumably this wouldn't make a difference to my PCI performance (not that it makes much difference to me because I only have one card installed and I use this PC lightly)

Just done some light reading and realised that having multiple pcie controllers plugged in won't bog down my processor, am I correct? If so, this is good news

The Core 2 Duo is significantly faster in architecture vs the Pentium 4. It's what set Intel apart back in 06 and AMD was never able to catch up. Despite being slower in clock speed IPC is much faster and they are dual core vs the P4 being single core. If you tried to do anything on the machine now that processor would basically be pegged at 50-100% constantly. Not to mention you can get Core 2 chips for pennies on the dollar these days. You can ignore the HT on the P4, it's garbage.

I edited my original post about the PCI throughput, as it's all through the chipset including the PCI-E. In the end it doesn't really matter as this PC is pretty much a stone age toy at this point so do whatever you want with it. In my original post I left what I'd do because when I get my hands on old hardware I think old games ran natively. I have a 98 box which is what made me think of the PCI stuff as back then all PCI overhead and IRQ was handled by the processor. So PCI, IDE, USB, network etc you wanted the processing offloaded by an AIC so more CPU cycles could be used for what mattered.