video cards

[moderate_rock48]

is there a way to add a video card to your computer and put it in something rather than an agp slot? my computer doesnt have a agp slot.

[oenone]

I'm assuming you have a regular PCI slot then (not PCI-express). There are some graphics cards that use a PCI slot, but you can expect fairly old cards with pretty low bandwidth! Just do a search on newegg or any online retailed, and set the filters to PCI only.

[moderate_rock48]

lol im sure motherboards that have PCI-express also have agp, man i really got screwed when i bought this computer, but alas it will not happen again!

[oenone]

lol im sure motherboards that have PCI-express also have agp, man i really got screwed when i bought this computer, but alas it will not happen again!

Erm, actually I've honestly never seen a motherboard that offered both PCI-E and AGP. If there are such things they must cost ungodly amounts of money. If your motherboard is PCI only, I recommend doing a system upgrade. Get a new motherboard, CPU, and video card! If you want to stick with intel, a 3.0-3.4 ghz P4 and a 6600GT or 9800 PRO would go a long way! For the motherboard look for an AGP one, no cheaper than $50 or so.

[ediehm]

ah yes... I have the same problem... i'm runnin' on integrated. Yes, they do make regular PCI video cards, although not as fast as AGP, they make them none the less... I don't know what kind you want or what you're using it for... but if you're plannin' on any gaming, then i'd have to agree with mr. oenone here and say, just upgrade your motherboard.

[rcrevolution]

pci-e and agp are competative types of slots, just like intel and amd would u ever a intel cpu and amd cpu on the same mobo?

[rcrevolution]

believe it or not, they still have pci cards which cost over $1000

[Rueful Rogue]

A Quick Tutorial on PCI, AGP and PCI-Express

The original PC bus in the original IBM PC (circa 1982) was 16 bits wide and operated at 4.77 MHz. It officially became known as the ISA bus. This bus design is capable of passing along data at a rate of up to 9 MBps (megabytes per second) or so, fast enough even for many of today's applications.

As technology advanced and the ISA bus failed to keep up, other buses were developed. Key among these were Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) -- which was 32 bits at 8 MHz-- and Vesa Local Bus (VL-Bus). The cool thing about VL-Bus (named after VESA, the Video Electronics Standards Association, which created the standard) is that it was 32 bits wide and operated at the speed of the local bus, which was normally the speed of the processor itself. The VL-Bus essentially tied directly into the CPU. This worked okay for a single device, or maybe even two. But connecting more than two devices to the VL-Bus introduced the possibility of interference with the performance of the CPU. Because of this, the VL-Bus was typically used only for connecting a graphics card, a component that really benefits from high-speed access to the CPU.

During the early 1990s, Intel introduced a new bus standard for consideration, the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus. PCI presents a hybrid of sorts between ISA and VL-Bus. It provides direct access to system memory for connected devices, but uses a bridge to connect to the frontside bus and therefore to the CPU. Basically, this means that it is capable of even higher performance than VL-Bus while eliminating the potential for interference with the CPU.

The frontside bus is a physical connection that actually connects the processor to most of the other components in the computer, including main memory (RAM), hard drives and the PCI slots. These days, the frontside bus usually operates at 400-MHz, with newer systems running at 800-MHz and even 1066 MHz.

The backside bus is a separate connection between the processor and the Level 2 cache. This bus operates at a faster speed than the frontside bus, usually at the same speed as the processor, so all that caching works as efficiently as possible. Backside buses have evolved over the years. In the 1990s, the backside bus was a wire that connected the main processor to an off-chip cache. This cache was actually a separate chip that required expensive memory. Since then, the Level 2 cache has been integrated into the main processor, making processors smaller and cheaper. Since the cache is now on the processor itself, in some ways the backside bus isn't really a bus anymore.

PCI can connect more devices than VL-Bus, up to five external components. Each of the five connectors for an external component can be replaced with two fixed devices on the motherboard. Also, you can have more than one PCI bus on the same computer, although this is rarely done. The PCI bridge chip regulates the speed of the PCI bus independently of the CPU's speed. This provides a higher degree of reliability and ensures that PCI-hardware manufacturers know exactly what to design for.

PCI originally operated at 33 MHz using a 32-bit-wide path. Revisions to the standard include increasing the speed from 33 MHz to 66 MHz and doubling the bit count to 64. Currently, PCI-X provides for 64-bit transfers at a speed of 133 MHz for an amazing 1-GBps (gigabyte per second) transfer rate!

PCI cards use 47 pins to connect (49 pins for a mastering card, which can control the PCI bus without CPU intervention). The PCI bus is able to work with so few pins because of hardware multiplexing, which means that the device sends more than one signal over a single pin. Also, PCI supports devices that use either 5 volts or 3.3 volts.

The PCI bus was adequate for many years, providing enough bandwidth for all the peripherals most users might want to connect. All except one: graphics cards. In the mid 1990s, graphics cards were getting more and more powerful, and 3D games were demanding higher performance. The PCI bus just couldn't handle all the information passing between the main processor and the graphics processor. As a result, Intel developed the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP). AGP is a bus dedicated completely to graphics cards. The bandwidth across the AGP bus isn't shared with any other components. Although PCI continues to be the bus of choice for most peripherals, AGP has taken over the specialized task of graphics processing.

PCI-Express, developed by Intel (and formerly know as 3GIO or 3rd Generation I/O), looks to be the "next big thing" in bus technology. At first, faster buses were developed for high-end servers. These were called PCI-X and PCI-X 2.0, but they weren't suitable for the home computer market, because it was very expensive to build motherboards with PCI-X.
PCI-Express is a completely different beast - it is aimed at the home computer market, and could revolutionize not only the performance of computers, but also the very shape and form of home computer systems.

This new bus isn't just faster and capable of handling more bandwidth than PCI. PCI-Express is a point-to-point system, which allows for better performance and might even make the manufacturing of motherboards cheaper. PCI-Express slots will also accept older PCI cards, which will help them become popular more quickly than they would if everyone's PCI components were suddenly useless.

It's also scalable. A basic PCI-Express slot will be a 1x connection. This will provide enough bandwidth for high-speed Internet connections and other peripherals. The 1x means that there is one lane to carry data. If a component requires more bandwidth, PCI-Express 2x, 4x, 8x, and 16x slots can be built into motherboards, adding more lanes and allowing the system to carry more data through the connection. In fact, PCI-Express 16x slots are already available in place of the AGP graphics card slot on some motherboards. PCI-Express 16x video cards are at the cutting edge right now, costing more than $500. As prices come down and motherboards built to handle the newer cards become more common, AGP could fade into history.

What The Future Could Be

PCI-Express could mean more than faster computers. As the technology develops, computer makers could design a motherboard with PCI-Express connectors that attach to special cables. This could allow for completely modular computer system, much like home stereo systems. You would have a small box with the motherboard and processor and a series of PCI-Express connection jacks. An external hard drive could connect via USB 2.0 or PCI-Express. Small modules containing sound cards, video cards, and modems could also attach. Instead of one large box, your computer could be arranged any way you want, and it would only be as large as the components you need.

[oenone]

Nice, helpful post Rogue. Rcrevolution, as Rueful Rogue pointed out, PCI-E is much faster than AGP. PCI-E 16X offers 4 times as much bandwidth as AGP. However, as I have said earlier, a graphics card in a pci-e card will perform no faster than one in an AGP slot right now. This is because AGP is still more than fast enough for current applications. Obviously, this will change, and fairly soon PCI-E motherboards and graphics cards will be the norm. I would like to stress that AGP and PCI-E are NOT competing like AMD an Intel, but that pci express is accepted by (almost) all as more robust, at least theoretically.

[Catweazle]

Rueful Rogue, unless you wrote that yourself could we have a link to the original article where it's published originally please? Copy/pasting stuff like that is a copyright contravention ;)

Moderate Rock, in all seriousness if your PC has no AGP or PCI-E slot for a graphics card, then it's not worth trying to improve the graphics capability of it. The machine is simply not up to the job!

Replacing the system unit is the best way to go, and you can obtain motherboard/processor/RAM bundles quite cheaply.

[sEt1]

hi I have a problem i don`t find any drivers for this laptop COMPAQ ARMADA 1700 6266/T/4000/D/0/3
can someone help me??? i tried hp site, nothing. PM me