BF2S Forums PCI or PCI Express

Or just take a pic of the card and host it for us and we can tell you.  Or you can google PCI-E for yourself and see on google what it looks like and compare for yourself.  It's not that hard to tell the difference.  PCI-E looks kind of like PCI, but not so much like AGP.  They have notches in different places.  I can tell just from a glance though.

That's a PCI-Express card.

Oh, and the notch on a PCI-E card is on the oppisite side of a PCI card.  About the same distance from the end too.

There's no doubt now that your card is PCI-Express.  Congrats, heh.

Last edited by T4rd (2006-07-17 08:08:16)

The problem is you bought your rig from dell.... if you have a digital camera take some pictures and post them....  If i am thinking right a PCI-E cards little copper interface chips on the card that you push into the slot should be a short little of half and inch, then a long one for the rest of the slot, PCI would have the long piece then the short one should be backwards from PCI-E, then an AGP slot on the mother board would really be offset to the right compared to the PCI slots below or above it. The cards interface pieces usually are divided into 3 pieces but there are ones are just 2, the long piece is usually short than the PCI ones hence the shorter piece is typically longer than PCI.  Hopefully this makes sense if it don't ignore me. Or just post a pic of your mobo and card.

(bah you i figured it out before i typed it)

Last edited by Emperor_D (2006-07-17 08:11:46)

If it looks exactly like that card in the pic; it's a PCI-Express card.  My friend has a dell from about a year and a half ago and it has a PCI-Express X800 XT in it.  So I KNOW that Dells had PCI-E mobos in their PCs back then.  Plus, if your Catalyst Control Center said "PCI-Express" and it looks just like that card in the pic, then it's DEFINITELY PCI-Express.  There's no reason to doubt what the Catalyst alone said.  Why would it say PCI-Express when it is anything else?!  It wouldn't...

That's all there is to it.

Any of the cards here should sort you out for sub $300.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi … ategory=48

Only other suggestion, get yourself an extra 1Gb of RAM.

Well I have an X1900XTX and it runs everything I've thrown at it extremely smoothly.  Havn't found anything to slow it down yet.  That or the 7900 GTX, they're about the same performance-wise.  I just went with ATI because of the AVIVO.  It's better for HDTVs.  I have a 1080P HDTV hooked up to it and it's really nice on this card.  Froma all the reviews I've seen about it, it's better for HDTVs than nVidias cards.  But for games on a regular monitor, there's no much diff.  Or you could get the 7950 GX2 for almost $600 and it'l be a tad better.  But I doubt you'd notice the diff in any games out today.

Edit:  It's actually a bad time to upgrade right now with the DX10 cards coming in just a few more months.  The only reason I did was because someone baught by old card for half the price of my new card and I couldn't pass that up.

Last edited by T4rd (2006-07-17 08:25:55)

If you're limited to $300 budget, go with my suggestions. If you can wait, or afford more now the GTX is a better card. But I would sacrifice your GPU performance a bit to get the extra RAM. Just my opinion.

You're welcome for the help.

Doc

DoctorFruitloop wrote:

Teamsreth wrote:

Just found this on US Dell site

Refurb 8400

Mine is a powercolor X1800 XT 512. Cant find pics at the mo'-----------------Found one. x1800xt



edited to add piccy

If that's the case then it looks like it's definitely PCI-E. One thing I would say, PSU at 350W is a bit wimpy for high end graphics cards. You might want to upgrade your PSU as well.

I would not recommend upgrading the PSU - Dell's motherboards are proprietary and so are their power supplies.  If you replace the power supply a lot of the time the wires can be switched and you will fry your motherboard (and sometimes whatever else is on it) beyond that you are also voiding your warranty (that is assuming you still have one on the refurbed model).

Well I am not a huge gamer, mainly just BF2 and a few others.   The card I am updating too is listed here along with another gig of memory.
http://www.buy.com/prod/ati_radeon_x160 … ml#moreimg

On question to everyone.   I am trying to remember how to determine the type of memory you have from windows, so I can be sure to order identical ram.

Thanks Doc, I would give a plus one but I cant give karma yet.   Someone hook the good doctor up with some positive karma.