PCI to PCI-e adaptor?

gizmo1990 · 19 Sep 2011 at 01:16

I've got a motherboard with a pci slot which I'd love to use with a pci-e video card I've been given. Yes I know it sounds daft but there you go.

I've seen around the net you can buy adaptors which would allow this to be done. However I just can't believe they'd work..?

Does anyone have any experience of these and could confirm if they'd work? Or even if someone could explain the theory behind them working because I'd of thought it would be impossible?

Any advice appreciated.

cmndr_andi · 19 Sep 2011 at 01:28

Yes, you can buy these adapters, usually from manufacturers like startech for around £30 (converts a PCI slot into a x1 PCI express slot).

However, for use with a graphics card, I would strongly recommend against doing it. For one thing, the bandwidth of a standard PCIE v2.0 x16 graphics card slot is around 8000MB/s (though admitedly few graphics card use all this, though most show big performance drops at x2 (1000MB/s or lower)) and a PCI slot can only run at a maximum of 266MB/s. From this, any half-decent graphics card would be crippled by a PCI connection.

Also, bearing in mind that one of these adapters costs ~£30, then you will be spending good money to make a modern graphics card work badly on a presumably very old/low end board.

Buchanan0204 · 19 Sep 2011 at 02:06

Andi... How do you know all this?

fornowagain · 19 Sep 2011 at 02:26

Common knowledge?

He's right btw. No where near enough bandwidth for a graphics card or any pci-e card that communicates heavily with cpu or memory. May have some limited applications, a PCI-e x1 slot isn't a lot of use.

gizmo1990 · 19 Sep 2011 at 09:36

Thanks for that guys, especially cmndr_andi.

Hmm right well I'll give it a think. If it's going to work that badly maybe it won't be worth it!