PCI-e

ssedd

Is there an easy way to visually see if a motherboard has a PCI-e slot? I have checked my motherboard spec online but it dosent say wether it is standard pci or pci-e. The slots look to me like standard pci slots but I am looking at upgrading my graphics card and most now ask for a pci-e slot.

gaming_guy

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if there are some vents on the side of the case, just shine a torch through the vent and see if there is one like on the image above

ssedd

Thanks for that, mine has only PCI slots which is what I thought.

Percy1983

I would say that if you only have PCI, then its new board time which may lead to new computer time.

cowbutt

I'd be surprised if you don't have at least an AGP slot; I have a machine from 1998 which does, and Wikipedia says they started appearing the year before that. AGP cards are difficult to buy these days, especially new, but if you look on eBay or a computer fair, you'll probably find a bargain.

epz_2

Unless its a server its almost certainly got agp my 1996 PII had it.

that said £/performance is much lower with agp gpus and ebay has loads of pcie cpu/ram/mobo combs going cheap.

Percy1983

cowbutt wrote: »

I'd be surprised if you don't have at least an AGP slot; I have a machine from 1998 which does, and Wikipedia says they started appearing the year before that. AGP cards are difficult to buy these days, especially new, but if you look on eBay or a computer fair, you'll probably find a bargain.

I have found this true to a point but it was the case back then that a lot of boards either had a AGP slot or onboard graphics so if the board in question is onboard then there is a good chance it is PCI only.

Out of interest what are the rest of your PC specs? anything less than a top end pentium 4 and graphics aren't worth upgrading as they will just be bottlenecked by the CPU.

exup

if the PC is running a good program to run is everest home (google search for it)
which should give a list of the motherboard's capabilities and any add ons that are also installed.

TimothyEBaldwin

cowbutt wrote: »

AGP cards are difficult to buy these days, especially new, but if you look on eBay or a computer fair, you'll probably find a bargain.

Be warned, they are several incompatable types of AGP, and typically motherboard graphics won't work if an AGP card is fitted.