oh man!

hi i was just planning to buy a new graphic card which is nvidia 7300..

i realised it was a PCI express thing while my current one is PCI..

can anyone tell me the difference between these 2 and how can i upgrade my PCI bus slot to a PCI express one, if im not wrong?

drz01

Can not be done. You need a new motherboard with pci express.
You can read about pci express here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci_express

Dark Atheist

if its pci-e - you might be able to if its pci-x then no, as i know one of them is backwards compable with the old 2.0 pci bus, just cant remember which

drz01

PCI has not been used for video in a long time man it has been agp for a long time...

Dark Atheist

i know but if mem serves me right you can use it, was pci for video before agp came along

epk

mm... all modern mb's have pci slots.. so u can still use ur card till u get a new one.


but on the pci slots... not on pci-e (pci express) nor pci-x ones (which i don't think u have anyway, cos they're not that common).

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oh man!

ok ok...
so now i know that PCI express requires a change of the motherboard, what are my options?

So which is better for graphics, the AGP or PCI card type?

Dark Atheist

if your getting a new board pci express is the better option

Shamus MacNoob

You wont find many AGP boards in any store, and the same for AGP cards, its not which is better it is which is available and cheaper, today you will pay more for AGP, DDR than you will for PCI-E and DDR2 .

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oh man!

ohh...alright..

well u guys know any cards from nvidia that is PCI but still has a good performance, with specs better than Radeon 9000 pro?

also a price range up to $150...thanks guys!

epk

mm... well.. browsing @ newegg the best i could find was a geforce 6200 (~40$)... not very good


considering pci express has been around for a few years now, have u tought about a bigger upgrade? (cpu, motherboard, ram)

cos, even if there was a better card (don't think u'll have much luck there), i'm guessing u'll still be bottlenecked by the rest of the system

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Ashuman

PCI Express slot is a powerful and speedy one whilst PCI is a slower one. It cannot run a ne w graphic card. also it is a lot smaller than PCI Express. The Thing you want cannot be done so at last you have to change your motherboard

LeeJend

Your MB/CPU and Grapics are 2-3 generations out of date. Sadly it is time for a new machine unless you want to buy used components.

BUT, even with used components you are not loking at much of an upgrade. PCI is severely limited for graphics which is why it was replaced by AGP 7 years ago and then AGO was repalced about 3 years ago.

Your cheapest bet would be to find an inexpensive system with an up to datye MB and a PCI-e (express) expansion slot a power supply with enough extra capacity to power a decent video card. The good news is even built in video on a new machine should be an improvement over what you have.

Since low end machines do not come with seperate video cards (they use built in on the MB). You will need to buy and install a video upgrade yourself. There are some nice entry level cards that will blow the socks off whta you have now.

The down side is that new machines all come with VISTA which means you need 2 gig ram minimum and your old software and hardware will likely not be compatible. You can set the new machine up to dual boot VISTA and XP to maintain compatibility (that's what I've done) while VISTA matures and you replace incompatible older products.

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American Zombie

Why would they need to buy used?

You can still purchase new PCI graphics cards although they are not as powerful as AGP or PCI-e.