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Geek Culture / Getting A New Graphics Card

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Ocho Geek
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Location: Manchester, UK
Posted: 19th Jul 2010 19:57
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Hey,

Im thinking of upgrading my grahpics card to a GTX 460 (hopefully 1GB) soon, as It's twice the price of my 8800GT and more or less twice as good, which sounds like a bargain to me

Now I'm not great at Hardware, put am I right in thinking these newer cards need two graphics card slots (or PCIe2 slots?) in the motherboard?

My current card is here
The basics are
AMX
AM2+ (using phenom X4)
DDR2 Memory
1 x PCI Express x16 slot
Quote: "(The PCI Express x16 slot conforms to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)"

Using a 650W power supply (enough for the new card)

Am I right in thinking I need a new motherboard for this card

I love Cheese; It Fills Me With Glees,
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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 19th Jul 2010 22:40
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i always thought, ATI cards go well with AMDs i also have an quad phenom2 (3.4ghz) and and and ATI hd5870 1gb. If you are gonna get your gtx 460 you might as well upgrade to ddr3, because the ddr2 will be a bottleneck for you

dont hate people who rip you off,cheat and get away with it, learn from them
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Ocho Geek
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Posted: 19th Jul 2010 22:43
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If I'm going to upgrade motherboards, I will consider it

is a ddr3 motherboard compatible with DDR2 memory
(until i can fund replacing it)

I love Cheese; It Fills Me With Glees,
My Tastebuds it please; oh yes, i love cheese.
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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 00:47
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nope, there are some boards however that have 2 different types of dimm 2x ddr1 and 2x ddr2 but i really would not reccomend using those since after you upgrade to ddr3, youe ddr2 slots wil become obsolite and just take up space on your motherboard, before you know it, you will want to add more memory say from 2 gigs to 4 gigs, instead of just buying 2 sticks of 1 gig each, you will have to buy 2 sticks of 2 gigs each and trow out your old ones, its just a waste to use a motherboard like that

dont hate people who rip you off,cheat and get away with it, learn from them
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Ocho Geek
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 00:55 Edited at: 20th Jul 2010 00:57
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I have DDR2 now so If I get a DDR3 motherboard, it CAN'T use DDR2 memory?


Quote: "REQUIREMENTS
- PCI Express or PCI Express 2.0- compliant motherboard with one dualwidth x16 graphics slot
- Two 6-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors
- Minimum 550W or greater system power supply (with a minimum 12V current rating of 38A)*"


This is from the novatech version of the 460, My main question being, what is a dualwidth x16 graphics slot, mine is stated as
Quote: "1 x PCI Express x16 slot (The PCI Express x16 slot conforms to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)"

So is dualwidth important or just technical nonsense?

I love Cheese; It Fills Me With Glees,
My Tastebuds it please; oh yes, i love cheese.
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Melancholic
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 01:01
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Quote: "I have DDR2 now so If I get a DDR3 motherboard, it CAN'T use DDR2 memory?"


Nope, it physically wont fit

Quote: "So is dualwidth important or just technical nonsense?"


it basically means that the space given for the pci card in the slot is twice as much. Its helpfull when the graphics card cooling unit is so large that it takes up an extra pci slot.

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Aaagreen
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 01:03
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Dual-width means it'll take up 2 of those slots at the back of your PC. I think it's just worded badly.

And DDR3 mobos aren't backwards compatable, sadly.


I'd love to see things from your point of view but I can't get my head that far up my bum.
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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 01:20
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you can use your ddr2 to upgrade an older mashine just for the fun of it. But really, its not worth using ddr2 because its gonna be a major bottleneck on our PC. in theory even if you could run ddr2 with ddr3, the ddr2 would underclock your ddr3 memory to ddr2 speeds. If you are running one memory chip at 800 mhz and another chip at 600 mhz, they cant both run on different frequencies, so it underclocks the 800mhz chip to the same speed as the 600 mhz. see what i mean?

dont hate people who rip you off,cheat and get away with it, learn from them
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Ocho Geek
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 01:22
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uh... enough to know it's probably best to stick to the correspondent, whatever-they're-called-memory-type-things

Is there an easy way of figuring out if my PCIe-2 slot is Dual-Width?

I love Cheese; It Fills Me With Glees,
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Ocho Geek
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 01:26 Edited at: 20th Jul 2010 01:26
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Ah, possible breakthrough

Quote: "It simply means that the video card is 2 slots wide (it's the equivalent of installing 2 cards in adjacent slots). Therefore the PCI-E x1 slot next to the x16 slot will be covered by the video card, making it useless."


SO, I'm only using one PCIe 2 slot but the one next to it (PCIe on mine) becomes blocked and therefore unusable, right?

I love Cheese; It Fills Me With Glees,
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Melancholic
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 01:32
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Quote: "SO, I'm only using one PCIe 2 slot but the one next to it (PCIe on mine) becomes blocked and therefore unusable, right?"


Im not sure about your motherboard. But yeah, the reason why its dual width is so the actual size of the pci card dosent block off any other slots/components of the motherboard.

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Ocho Geek
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 01:37 Edited at: 20th Jul 2010 01:40
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On my motherboard, (I've checked the cards direction when installed) The card would only block off the slot called PCIE_2 (second of 4 Pcie Slots)

Am I right in thinking that that slot wont be used, and that the card will fit?

I love Cheese; It Fills Me With Glees,
My Tastebuds it please; oh yes, i love cheese.
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Melancholic
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 01:47 Edited at: 20th Jul 2010 01:51
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Quote: "On my motherboard, (I've checked the cards direction) The card would only block off the slot called PCIE_2 (second of 4 Pcie Slots)

Am I right in thinking that that slot wont be used, and that the card will fit?"


If you dont need to use the PCI 2 slot for anything then obviously it wont be used. Though the point in having it dual width is that it would not block it if the PCI card was large. Chances are that if you dont know if that port will be used it wont be. Just make sure none of your components require it , and if they do, just look for a PCI-E alternative if their not too exspensive.

If you are planning to put the new GPU into the slot where the old one was wouldent it be worth while just checking how much clearence there is between it and the other nearest component which might cause a conflict?

As you can see from this picture:


the gtx is wider then a normal PCI card

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Ocho Geek
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 01:50
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The Slot which would be blocked would just be a PCIe slot, one of four, there's no reason for it to be used right?

I love Cheese; It Fills Me With Glees,
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Melancholic
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 01:55
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Quote: "there's no reason for it to be used right?"


If you have no use for it of course not

Ofcourse, if there was, you could allways use one which isnt blocked

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Ocho Geek
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 02:00 Edited at: 20th Jul 2010 02:00
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I see, are there any common uses for these slots?
(I'm avoiding unscrewing anything, I can't really do it and my dad's Ill)

I love Cheese; It Fills Me With Glees,
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Melancholic
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 02:27
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Quote: "I see, are there any common uses for these slots?"


To be honest i dont know, from pictures of the actual port they look similliar to what i dealt with whilst replacing a wirless card in a laptop. So im guessing there popular in laptops and just generally more convienient as there smaller.

Though dont quote me on that as its just a guess!, im sure some googling will reveal the truth

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charger bandit
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 10:07
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The PCIe slots are so useless. The biggest use for them would be like an extension soundcard or some additional USB ports,but nothing else. Plus you have three others and some PCI ports which will be more than enough.


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Ocho Geek
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 12:59
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okay, thanks

So, as a final check, I should be able to get the card?

I love Cheese; It Fills Me With Glees,
My Tastebuds it please; oh yes, i love cheese.
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Aaagreen
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 15:07
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Yeah.


I'd love to see things from your point of view but I can't get my head that far up my bum.
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Ocho Geek
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Posted: 20th Jul 2010 16:03
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Thanks a lot to everybody who helped then

I love Cheese; It Fills Me With Glees,
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