Hello, it has been a long time. Question about graphics cards:

does any of my friends know if this video card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127436 will work in an old compaq I have? its the S5000NX compaq presario desktop. The processor is pretty decent on this for its time and with this video card I can make it do netflix and things quite well. But I am unsure if the pci express 2.0 card will work in the older port. Can anyone tell me if it will?

I think it will, but I am unsure. I always get confused with the older AGP and pci and the new pci express tech.

anything is better then the built in on board intel 64mb shared memory graphics lol. I realize I will not get the full speed of the card on an older pci slot.

I think PCI and PCI Express are completely different sockets and will not fit each other. You need to find out exactly what kind of socket (s) you have. Perhaps you can look up what kind of motherboard it is and then look up the motherboard specs/what socket it has/ on the Internet. You might be able to find a picture of an AGP socket.

You could look through "forum jump"-general hardware from this forum. I got some links about video card information somewhere here a while back but cannot remember the address. If you happen to have an Intel motherboard you could look up http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support...oards/d845grg/ as an example of what you can find out about a motherboard and its sockets.

Found this: http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html might have come from one of the experts here,don't remember

The slots for standard PCI and PCIe are not the same as was already mentioned. A PCIe card wouldnt fit in a PCI slot. Pictures here. You may not be totally out of luck though, you can still buy PCI video cards. These would better than your on board video.
Add ons could also tax your power supply. There are some calculators you could use as a rough guide.
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Those websites were very helpful. I am thinking about getting a card that is like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131325

Hopefully I can get it a little cheaper by finding a different card :cool:

Also, thank you so much for the link to that website showing pictures and explaining the differences. I needed a refresh on pci agp and pci express. That helps me out a lot. I build my own systems but I always seem to forget the standards for add on cards; and how to know what one can take and such.

Check your power supply watts. A lot of commercial cases are proprietary and pretty tight. A standard size video card may not fit. Might need a low profile card.

I think the computer companies should offer the full size cases for their top of the line towers for people who might want to add stuff later on or even completely redo the machine later with a new motherboard,processor, powersupply and everything else. Might have better airflow too. And I don't think a tower is a desktop. A desktop is one of those old things that the monitor (used to be monochrome) sets on top of. If I want a full size computer I don't want some cramped shrunken down little box. If I want a compact portable computer I want a laptop or notebook.

The cases are shrinking in size because the hardware is shrinking. Remember those hulking 80lb monitors?