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4x Limitations and recommendations?

maxp

maxp

maxp

Associate
Joined
1 Jun 2008
Posts
3
Hey all,

Bit of a weird situation here in that ive only got one pcie 4x slot available. Now ive got a 4x - > 16x adapter so size *shouldnt* be a problem, but im looking for a graphics card and am wondering:

1) Am i limited by the bus speed of pcie x4 when selecting a graphics card,

and as a result,

2) Can someone recommenend a graphics based on the outcome of point 1) that is low power and has hdmi out (b/c I have a ~350w psu- again weird situ. but upgrading this is not possible)

Thanks!
 
Welcome to the forums. Are you sure you're limited to a 4x physical slot? not just electrically limited to 4x, i.e. reduced bandwidth? I would expect a ~10-15% drop in performance with such a slot.

List the rest of your specs and budget. Thanks.
 
Its a btx server board. 2gig ecc ram which afaic is fine, paired 80gb raid 0 disks, and the worst onboard gfx ever - a radeon 7000 or equivalent, its honestly awful. Its got a dual core (pre c2d whatever they were called) modded from 2.0 to 2.66ghz so the only thing holding this back is the graphics card.
Just to clarify, yes it has a 8x pcie slot but this downgrades itself to 1x if it detects a graphics adapter is in it, this is not the case with the 4x (physically 4x long) which will always run at 4x regardless of whats in it.

As i mentioned tho, ive got a 4x to 16x adapter so physically the new gfx card should work, im just curious of where the speed threshold is b/c i dont wanna plump for something that will have a bottleneck, so the budget is ~£90 and would prefer a card that draws as less watts as poss and prefer native hdmi out
 
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A HD3850 won't be too bottlenecked tbh, nowhere near like a 8800GTX/Ultra for example; ATI's cards are also better optimised for lower bus speeds compared to nVidia too.
 
Thanks for the reply chaps - one thing that is playing on my mind tho, the riser card raises the slot height by 0.8", i know this is abit of a tricky question but do you think i'll face any problems?
 
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