PCI Express x1 Graphics Card help

Lord Deco

Hi fellas,have looked around ebay and dabs and cant find a PCI Express x1 card,which isnt a complete rip off,can anyone link me to one which is half decent?

A friend of mine wants a card,to watch hd on hdtv and his integrated stuff is horrible....

Pc is A Dell Dimension DV051..


Motherboard:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4 521, 2800 MHz (14 x 200)
Motherboard Name Dell Dell DV051
Motherboard Chipset Intel Grantsdale-G i915GV
System Memory 1024 MB (DDR2-533 DDR2 SDRAM)


Display:
Video Adapter Intel(R) 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family (128 MB)
3D Accelerator Intel GMA 900

TerrorFirmer

Yes they are very expensive but you will always pay over the odds for them. What about regular PCI? Nice one here, although it is 100 quid for ancient tech, it's about as good as can possibly get for pci, low profile, tv out, dual dvi, acceptable performance on older games. Basic Fx5200 for 45 quid.

It depends on how much the pci-e cards you were looking at were I suppose...I'm not even sure what mainstream 1x Video cards there are, apart from the HIS X1300.

Lord Deco

Thanks Havok,he doesnt want to spend too much,about €50....

Can that motherboard support regular pci cards.....

He lives in Kildare,I live in Cork,so im just going by what he tells me the device manager says...

TerrorFirmer

Yeah I just looked up that system online (it's an e310) and it does have the 1x slot as well as 2 pci, just as I said those cards are very hard come by and just as expensive as pci counterparts. While performance would be slightly better with the 1x card....is it worth it, will he need it? The Fx5200 will work in any machine with a free pci slot.

What sort of HD is he watching, it's his processor will cause problems, you can play hd with a gma900. I assume he's watching 720

Lord Deco

Yeah 720p,he wants to play a few older strategy games too like age of empires 3....His main complaint is his divx movies look bad through avg on his 42" samsung and he wants to make use of a dvi to hdmi cable he got for free....

Lord Deco

Would this do the job?

FX5200 €36

http://cgi.ebay.ie/nVidia-GeForce-5200-128MB-Graphics-Card-PCI-DVI-FX5200_W0QQitemZ230200824884QQihZ013QQcategoryZ3762QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

TerrorFirmer

Yeah should work but remember a PCI card is considerably slower then it's AGP counterpart and the Fx5200 is a poor card go begin with. Should be fine with AOEIII (minimum requirements 64mb t&l) but that's not a guarantee and it really wouldn't be wanting to get more intensive then that. PCI delivers far less bandwidth then agp obviously and if you check reviews between pci and agp Fx5200's, there are some large differences in results depending on what's being tested, and the margin widens massively with newer games - to the extent that even an older game like AOEIII playable at above minimum settings on an Fx5200 AGP could easily be completely unusable on the lowest available settings with the PCI version. You should check adverts, ask for a PCI card, I know there was a few PCI Fx5200's floating around when I needed one.

As for the HD, he really should be looking at a better processor....again playback of HD should be generally fine with a gma900.

WillieDH

Its an aside but you should get yourself to www.Logmein.com

Allows you to remote control your mates PC.

It's excellent, that way you can reduce the amoun of time you spend being your mates "helpdesk"

Lord Deco

WillieDH wrote: »

Its an aside but you should get yourself to www.Logmein.com

Allows you to remote control your mates PC.

It's excellent, that way you can reduce the amoun of time you spend being your mates "helpdesk"

Thanks for that Willie...

I will give it a try tomorrow..