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A fast PCI x1 GFX card ?

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

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I have just knocked up another ITX PC.
Loving these little buggers, but in my route of not looking properly at what I am buying, this latest Mobo only has a PCIx1 slot.
Ok, not really a huge issue, and the onboard nVidia 610 is more than capable of doing its job as a media Machine, but it got me thinking about PCI x1 Graphics cards, and do they exist?

Yes, they definitely do, and I have seen a few for sure, but then comes the other questions that we usualy have running through our heads, such as how good are they compared to normal ones, whats the fastest I can get if I was to want a fast one, and are my thoughts about the girl next door legal or not? - you know... The usual things that go through a mans mind when he is thinking!

So, my question is simply this... I hope that anyone can also offer anything to advisse me too of course.

What is the best / Fastest Graphics card that one can buy, for use in a PCI x1 slot?

I myself have a sort of partner up sort of mind.

In other words, if the Chipset is ATI, then I always use an ATI GPU, and if it is nVidia, then I always use nVidia, I dont know why, it just feels proper, and sure, I kno thats just silly, but thats me.

So, ideally, I wand to know more for nVidia than ATI, because if I do bother with buying one, it will be nVidia

Now, here comes possibly the most stupid question, but its one that I still must ask, cos its jumping around in my head crying to be let out, but I have bought a handful of Motherboards lately that have been ATI and have this Hybrid Crossfire thingy in them, and so, I have bought a compatible ATI card to play about with this hybrid thingy and I have had some great fun in doing it, even if it does mean that most of the time I am wasting money, its all just fun really... But the question I have to ask is this :-

Can I get some kind of hybrid SLI if I was to buy a 610 PCI x1 card?

Could I even maybe get some near-useless PhysX setup with them?

Hey you got to ask these thigns cos I just have to know. Im a bit mental sometimes and I like to fiddle.

Any answers will be great so thanks in advance.
 
Yes, I have seen risers of all descriptions, and sure, even x1 to x16 through a cable so you can mount the card elsewhere in the case if need be.

I have seen some really weird options for sure.

But, what would the benefit be?

Sure, there would be a huge reason why, otherwise, they would not both with so many types of PCI slot would they?

Lets just say, that I did indeed "trim" the end of the slot, would it be worth it?

Am I simply going to have the ability of running the card at its proper speed, or am I simply going to have a seriously slow version of that card, because I am only using the x1 slot and not the full x16 one?

Surely the reason behind the bigger slot, is for the quicker access to get the data to/from the card?

( Reminder to self - Check out the specs of the PCI slots and the pinouts fatty! )

ADDITION

Well, that was the quickest look ever, but yes, the only difference is simply that the first load of pins in them all are 100% identical, but the x4, x8, and x16 have more pins for data... Probably in an overly simplified way, the data is simply done in 1 4 8 or 16 bits at a time perhaps?

So yeah, it certainly DOES look like I could modify the slot and use a half decent old card to get a bit better graphics to work?
 
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One more thought...

This should also be the same for any card then surely?

Each card, even if that card has the pins, if the yare NOT connected, then it will simply not use them, and so in theory, I could use ANY card at all in any of the slots?

Cool, I did not know that!

Thank you... ( Digs out the tool kit and proceeds to murder a perfectly good motherboard )
 
Any card will work in a PCIe x1 slot, just that the interface will be limited to PCIe x1 speeds. You might have to make the slot open ended or use a riser as described.

There are very few cards with a PCIe x1 interface because of this - may as well sell it as a x16 card and people can use it in a x1 slot if they like - you may find some random Matrox ones but they probably aren't any faster than your 610.

ATI don't exist. They were bought by AMD in 2006. You cannot buy an ATI product anymore.

nVidia do not make chipsets anymore, they have not for years. Your motherboard is an Atom with an Intel chipset and an nVidia GPU on board rather than on a PCIe card.

You cannot do SLI with something as low end as a 610. Even if you could, it would be pointless, it's a 48SP chip and you'd not save any money buying that rather than a much better card with many more shaders. E.g. a GT720 is £32.99 and is 192 shaders.

You could in theory connect a Titan X to your PCIe x1 slot. It would be horribly bottlenecked by the Atom CPU.

There are some activities for which PCIe bandwidth is important, others for which it is not. For gaming, any card, even a mid range one, is going to be hamstrung by a x1 slot, especially as it's probably PCIe 2.0 not 3.0. For others, the PCIe x1 slot won't really make a difference, for example, you could do bitcoin mining just as well with a x1 slot as with a x16 slot.

Given that, there is no answer to "what is the most powerful card that won't be affected by being in a x1 slot".

And even when a card is affected by being in a x1 slot, it will still likely be faster overall than the card that is slower and is not affected by being in a x1 slot.

I would not bother trying to make a gaming rig with an Atom CPU and a x1 PCIe slot though. Also, don't bother trying to use the 610 for PhysX, it has 48 shaders and is fermi.
 
Sorry rtho but you missed my point.

I am purely meddling with this simply out of sheer boredom.

I know that SLI is useless, I just wondered abotu it thats all... As I said, I did the very same with Hybrid ATI stuff purel;y for a giggle and no other reason. Although to be honest, I was fairly surprised at how good the crossfire was in the silly messing about I did, but again, Im only really messing with the lower end of stuff and Im only knocking up these basic PCs purely to piddle about. Once Im dont with them, I mostly give them away with the exception of the last one I did and thats an A10 that I liked so much, that I have made it my main Linux PC. I suppose given that I have machines like I7s and even a dual CPU XEON that cost me £4000 to build and yet is set in the attic doing nothing, only goes to show how mental I am... In fact, I have just a few days ago, bought a dual CPU AMD server Board with 2 AMD Opterons and the ONLY reason I bought that, is that it was dual CPU @ 2.5Ghz and I simply wanted to compared it to the XEON as thats also 2.5Ghz Dual CPU too! the AMD being 2x16 core and the Xeons being 2.3Ghz but 2x10 Core with Hyperthreading

Again, I will ponce about with those and then end up doing nothing much at all with them, although I am almost definitely going to make use of them sometime in the year because they have all cost me thousands I suppose?

ATI dont exist.
Yes, I know that, old habits etc.

Motherboard is an atom?
No, the CPU is a Core2Duo, the Motherboard is a standard ITX, the Chipset is nVidia its an nforce 610i and the onboard is nvidia too.
Its just an old 775 with a Core2Duo @ 1.8 but a Pentium core. I have a few spare Quad 6600 CPUs lying about from a few years ago, and so I did plan on using one of those, however the AIO I got for this case does not fit into it and so I will be limited in what I can do with cooling it, but the CPU thats in there is doing a good enough job for what I want it for for now, so I will leave it in there fore a bit. I will give the DuadCore a play about some other time, but I dont really care too much to be honest. Its only a basic PC thats never going to be more than a toy for a bit until I either get rid of get a proper Board and CPU for it.

Titan to the slot.
LOL I am stating to see that now yes, and thats a giggle and a half if nothing else.
I no longer play top end games as I had an accident in 2012 andI have very little use of my left hand and so the only games I really play are mouse only really... A few others that dont require me to use multiple fingers I will have a go of, but the best cards I have that are spare is a couple of nV 680 GTXs and a pair of 470GTX cards, and amazingly, the cases that I have chosen for both these little ITX Machines that I have knocked up recently, are the GlobalWin 130 ( thats the AMD A10 ) and this one I got the other day and this is the GlobalWin 120... Slightly older model, but it also looks like it will support full sized cards.
But those cards in in some of the LAN PCs so they ARE being used. Im sure I have a couple of other lesser cards though... I think I have a 7900 or maybe a 7800 thats spare somewhere? they will do the job just fine I think? it depends on whether they are still actually working well enough to give me a lovely crystal clear display or not?

Yes, the original question was about PCI x1 and I did not know, until just earlier on, that I could open up the slot and use any PCI card in there... Sure with the dimished capabilities of course, but it was purely because I wanted to free up the little bit of extra ram that on-board uses, and of course I dont really need the speed as such, it was more a wondering about it, knowing that they actually do exist, then how fast is the fastest one, given that they do exist? I also did not want to simply waste money on something that costs a load of money when I will not see any actual benefits over something that I can get for a few quid instead!

I think perhaps benchmarking a card that has multiple slots, will give me an idea in comparing what they will be limited to?

Gaming rig.
Hell no, I am not going to make a gaming rig, when did I say that? Im merely plonking about because Im bored to buggery. however, as I just said just now... If getting a £200 card will nto be nebeficial over a £20 card, then I might as well just get the £20 one, but if the £200 one is massively better, then I will get it.

Actually, no I wont, I will probably still go for the £20 with this setup because Im not going to keep it and it will only ever be an internet PC or maybe a MediaCentre PC and nothing more... Even if I used the Quad core, I dont expect it to do much, however with a Quad core, if the Graphics CAN be made to be something a bit half decent, then there is no reason why I might not be also to play basic 3D stuff?

And again similarly with PhysX - I know thats a waste of time and sure, when I toyed with the idea before I found that you needed 8800 to even start considering it feasable, and hell, I got a pair of old PCI PhysX cards - I bought my first one and it cost me £150 and that was a pile of junk... I used it alongside my 6800GT cards at the time and it barely made a difference other than a veryu very few FPS here and there for I think 2 games that I did not even have LOL

No, I have no intention of making this machine into any kind of gamer at all. I have far too many other PCs to do gaming on, this is just another toy that will drive me and the wife further apart until I buy her another bloody washing machine or cooker or whatever the hell is next on her list LOL.
 
Ah, sorry I assumed it was newer than it is, I was thinking of the Geforce GT610, which is on some Atom ITX boards as a GPU :P

If you have an nForce 610i chipset, it's a Geforce 7050, this is a two pipeline 7 series card, from before Unified Shaders were a thing. It does not support CUDA, so does not support PhysX.

It does not support SLI.

There will be a benefit from a £200 card over a £20 card, but not as much of one as you'd normally expect.

There are people that have done similar to this on laptops, running a x1 connection from an expresscard slot or a MiniPCIe slot to an external GPU. It is a performance hit, but it works. You might lose say, 25% performance on a high end card, but it's still way faster than a mid range card (which itself might lose 15% performance) or a low end card.

An example is in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...mod-pcie-3-0-lid-mod-power-button-mod.773520/

You would get a crystal clear display for windows on your Geforce 7050/nForce 610i.
 
Yeah the 7050 Chipset.
No SLI of course, I suppose its obvious, but I just kind of hoped... Dunno why? Little bit of optimism I suppose?

Link. Thanks. I will have a proper look later on.

Crystal clear display.
Oh yes, it absolutely does give a great clear display. What I said was that I have a couple of old cards, a 7800 and/or a 7900 that I am sure are not being used, and these will be acceptable to use, if I knew where the heck they were, but my htoughts are, whether either of these will give the clear display like the 610 does, or rather, like a new card would... They are after all, pretty old cards now, and have very much had their day.

--

Ok, for what it is worth, I have had a look at the board, its a ZOTAC ( I got plenty of cards by them, but no Mobos until now. Just a side note ) and just after the PCI slot, a couple of inches over, is a 3-pin header, and then just after that, the sounder and then the Front Panel headers.

Now, I suppose, I could just bend these over a tad to let me use a graphics card in the slot, but I have decided to just buy a riser instead.
I have however got myself a fair few different types of them, and so they are bound to work.

x1 to x1 direct so that the x1 slot is simply half an inch higher. I got 2 of these and one I will cut, the other will be stock.
x1 to x16 riser. This will let me use the card in place, but a bit higher.
x1 to x16 on a ribbon cable - I have 2 of these one is powered the other is not.
This will allow me to put the GFX card next to where the 1 is on the board, but kind of hanging there. It will mean that I wont be able to use cards that normally take up 2 slots, but hey ho, it matters not.

The ONLY issue I can see, is that where the GFX card is screwed into place, the bit folds over on the back plate doesnt it? Well the case has a fairly tight hole and so I am unsure if this will be suitable, and so, what I may need to do, is flatten out the back plate off the card, and screw it in from the back rather than top down. I will have to leave that however until I know whether I need to or not, as I am not 100% sure where the hole would need to be, or even if it needs one at all.

Anyway, for a bit of a giggle, I have been and chucked Mint linux onto it for a laugh and it runs mint absolutely beautifully. the 3D Desktop is doing great and there has been no rips or tears in the display and it has been silky smooth.

However...

I copied a load of my steam folder over and had a twiddle with a couple of games and they are near to useless.

I will leave it for a bit now... I need a kip.
 
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