PCI-e x16 for PCI-e x4?

[Gig-O-Ram]

Will a x16 card work in a slot that only supports x4? The Biostar PT880 Pro-A7 in the wife's machine has support for both AGP and PCI-e x1 and x4, but Newegg doesn't seem to have x4 cards - only x1 and x16. I want to make sure it works or not before I buy anything.

[Capper]

Should work just fine, and as long as she isn't doing any seriously graphics intensive applications or gaming, she won't notice any difference at all.

[Gig-O-Ram]

Originally Posted by Capper

Should work just fine, and as long as she isn't doing any seriously graphics intensive applications or gaming, she won't notice any difference at all.

Well, the reason I want to upgrade her video card is so she CAN do work with video editing and CGI graphics creation software like Quidam or Poser. Her current card won't handle those things at all, so it would be time to move up. I'm also going to upgrade the RAM from a DDR PC3200 to DDR2 PC5300.

[Stormcrow]

From DDR to DDR2? DDR has 184 pins, while DDR2 has 240. They're not compatible, your motherboard can only support either DDR, DDR2, or DDR3; one won't work in a mobo designed around another. Sounds like your best bet here if you want to go with that card is to pretty much overhaul the system, which means a new mobo with DDR2 sockets and a PCI-E x16 lane and a new processor unfortunately. The cheaper route would be to find a decent AGP version, or one close to it and just stick with DDR.

[Gig-O-Ram]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

From DDR to DDR2? DDR has 184 pins, while DDR2 has 240. They're not compatible, your motherboard can only support either DDR, DDR2, or DDR3; one won't work in a mobo designed around another. Sounds like your best bet here if you want to go with that card is to pretty much overhaul the system, which means a new mobo with DDR2 sockets and a PCI-E x16 lane and a new processor unfortunately. The cheaper route would be to find a decent AGP version, or one close to it and just stick with DDR.

I understand what you're saying about the compatibility thing, but the motherboard in question has support for both DDR and DDR2, AGP and PCI-express. There are actually two sets of DIMM slots for both types of RAM. Her current video card is AGP, but I was wondering if going to the PCI-e wouldn't be better for what my wife wants to do.

[Capper]

Let me get a little sleep, my schedule is still all messed up. tomorrow i'll do a little testing and see what kind of effect it'll have and if you'll be able to do what you need to do

[Stormcrow]

Ah, I see, one of them dualie boards In that case, what card are you getting? PCI-E 4x has the same speed as AGP, give or take about .1 Mbps, and most cards work just fine at that. If your looking at a 8800, the tests on the net show about a 15% loss in performance due to bottlenecking, which isn't too bad. 2900XT should be about the same. Unless you're looking at a monster card, (8800 in all its flavors, 2900XT, 7950 GX2/1950 Pro Dual, the new Quadro/FireGL cards) then you should be just fine with the 4x speed.

[Capper]

yeah, the performance loss shouldn't be too bad.....but I'll still try to run some tests to put your mind at ease tomorrow.

[Hitman]

AnandTech: VIA PT880 PRO: Biostar’s Deluxe Dual Combo

Thats actually a pretty neat little Motherboard. Would have been a great budget board about a year an a half ago.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by Gig-O-Ram

Will a x16 card work in a slot that only supports x4? The Biostar PT880 Pro-A7 in the wife's machine has support for both AGP and PCI-e x1 and x4, but Newegg doesn't seem to have x4 cards - only x1 and x16. I want to make sure it works or not before I buy anything.

I'm not sure I totally understand what your exact situation is. The nice thing about PCI-Express cards is the serial interface that is scalable (hence the SLI name which stands for Scalable Link Interface). So you CAN use an x1 card in an x4 or x16 slot. You can also use an x16 card in an x1 or x4 slot, but the slot must have the back side edge cut out to physically allow the full x16 connector to fit in the smaller x1 or x4 slot.
I also found some benchmarks on the performance of the different PCI-Epxress bus width's using modern graphics cards...