I have just recently bought another PC, its an hp compaq evo d510 sff, sff standing for small form factor, tiny narrow PC, which wouldnt be too much of a problem, i can notch the back of the case out to take a full height card if needbe, but, theres something else....

As this PC is only about 3 years old it does not have an AGP slot, and the bad news is it does not have a PCIe slot either, all it has is a tiny little black slot, (god knows what it is, see pic to see what i mean) and 2 old style PCI slots.

See at the moment, im stuck with onboard graphics, an "Intel 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family" to be precise, which is, well, shite, and i was hoping to upgrade so i have something playable, as with this onboard shizzle, it simply aint.

However, im struggling to find a way of doing this, is there any kind of PCI to AGP adapter or something, or if not s there such a thing as a sensibly powerful PCI graphics card still made, something around the 256mb mark??

Heres a pic of what im faced with...



I have had a quick scout around on ebay and places but all i can seem to find are PCI-e cards that are listed incorrectly.

AFAIK the black connector is a PCIe at 1X, while the common for graphic cards runs at 8 or 16x. But I think they work there also. I read something in topics about using several cards

Well..

Its a PCI express [something] (blocked view)

Because it's printed on the board... I can read it from your photo

That is all it says, pci express, so it must therefore be a pci e 1x socket, just gotta find a decent 1x card now then lol

Quote from danthebangerboy :

That is all it says, pci express, so it must therefore be a pci e 1x socket, just gotta find a decent 1x card now then lol

Not necessarily. The fact is, is that any PCIe component will work on any PCIe slot (Contrary to the belief that only lower PCIe spec'd components will work on lower spec'd slots or above [ie. 4x will run on 4x, or 8x, or 16x]. I'll show you an example of what you can do to run a full fledged 16x card (given that it fits) into your 1x slot [performance will suffer a lot, but you won't be stuck with crappy on-board]

PCIe Slot -> PCIe adapter -> PCIe Cable/

What ends up happening is that you want to cut the back end of the slot so you can fit the card into the slot. The only barrier is that piece of plastic that blocks the card from getting into the slot [size of the slot compared to the size of the connection on card]. The cutting can be made by using something like a dremel. By using a cable to extend it out of the original slot, you do not need to cut the back end out of the slot on the motherboard, but out of a $10 commodity that you bought off E-Bay.

With this, you will be able to run cheap cards that cost merely $50 (ie. 9600GSOs) that will run 10x better than a similarity priced PCI card (ie. FX5200, 6200LE), and shit-load better than the IGP even with the bandwidth bottleneck (250MBPS?). I'd look for a cheap low-profile card. You may not need as much as let's say a 9600GSO [GT220/8800gs] or similar spec'd, but maybe something like a 8400GS, GT210 that will not saturate the link to the NB, and will still allow minimal gaming for LFS, WoW at resonable detail and resolution, and HD content.

This will cost way less than a specially made 1x card which may go into the hundreds, giving no better performance improvements; money better spent on another rig, future overhauls, other accessories in the rigs, or even S3 xD>>>

I searched "PCIe 16x card in 1x slot". I am not able to find a page where they have actually performed the mod with pictures, but reference the page below to find out that it is possible, done. I am sorry that I couldn't find any links, but hopefully this will help you get some more graphic horse power into the versatile little machine of yours.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1238533

Cheers!

Quote :

something around the 256mb mark??

Many of them do. Most of the FX5200 PCIs that I see have 256 MBs of RAM on the chip, and some with 128. However, with the power of the core, you may end up not using a majority of it because the textures aren't rendered fast enough. If it did render that fast, I'd doubt with a mini-ATX (modern Atom class CPU) that was built 3 years ago would be able to hold up with it. And people say Atoms are bad, which I beg to differ in some cases.

Hopefully we are dealing with Conroe based Celerons which are fast little beasts even at low clock frequencies. And probably, cars in the higher range will be just fine with them.

You could try one of these cards, if you can find them.

http://www.techpowerup.com/130 ... ss_x1_Graphics_Cards.html

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/220412

EDIT: this aswell http://www.ebuyer.com/product/195059

Stopped using D510's at work about 18 months ago. Minimum spec is dc7600's now! But we could fit ati cards in there, will try and find out the name/make for you tomorrow when I'm at work.
http://www.bell-group.net/page.php/contact Might be worth contacting them for a dc7100 if you cant find a card, would presume it wouldnt be much! Ive sent a few thousand down to the depo myself