PCI Confusion

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Joined
17 Mar 2003
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351
Location
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I'm considering my options for uppgrading my old rig as my graphic card has died.

But I've been away for too long, for I'm already confused.

I want a motherboard with PCI-Express. Now is this a dedicated slot for the graphic card or are we back to the days when it can go in any PCI slot?

Alsot, looking at various 939 boards it seems all have 2 or 3 PCI slots. Furthermore confused by some being PCI Express x16 and some PCI Express x4 and some x1? What is that all about? Example ASUS A8N-E nForce4 Ultra

I have four PCI cards in addition to my graphic card, what's up with the lack of PCI slots in new motherboards?

Also, I would like to get myself a board with SATA, but I still need two IDE for my CD/DVD and two IDE HDs...

Can anyone shed any light on my confusion and perhaps even suggest a motherboard I could use?

Thanks.
 
Don't people use PCI cards anymore? Everyone just buying plug-in USB and firewire or what?

I mean if you want a wireless card, TV card, soundcard and of course graphic card that is a pretty basic setup and already its 4 PCI slots required...

What am I missing?
 
Ok, thanks. I understand that the graphics card goes in its own PCI-express (PCI-16) slot.

And from your comments and some reading I now understand that PCI-1 is the lowest bandwidth (still more than traditional PCI) of a brand new PCI architecture.

I'll want to transfer my creative audigy 2 soundcard and Hauppage TV card, but I guess I can use the inbuilt networking if I find one with that in it. I'm not to keen on using wireless anyway as I've had plenty of problems with it.

Glad to hear that most mobos still come with 2 IDEs as well as several SATAS. I did see this on some of the motherboards I've looked at.
 
Yes I don't need SLI/Crossfire, would be overkill for me.

What about this one, Abit KN8 Ultra nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard? It looks good to me for a high-end budget gaming machine. I'm not sure what RAM to get for it though. I'm looking at the manual which says it supports 4 Dual DDR 400/333/266 non-ECC un-buffered memory. What would be a good choice for x2 512 MB DIMMs?

PS! Would 2GB (2x1GB) memory make a big difference? It would be twice the price, but would leave the path open to uppgrade to 4GB later?
 
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