PCI [E-X] etc slot question.

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A few years ago I bought an HP XW8200 workstation; it has PCI-E 16 graphics which seems to work choppy with linux; i have tried about 5 distributions. There is no AGP

The expansion slots are (from the manual)

2 full-length PCI slots (3 full-height PCI-X slots (one 133 MHz, two 100 MHz slots)
1 PCI Express (x8 mechanically, x4 electrically)
1 PCI Express x16 graphics

Can I install a regular PCI graphics card into one of these?

I open the case and there are (3) really long white slots. (2) short white ones, a brown one and the one the graphics card is in (not like any of the others)

I guess I don't keep up on this stuff like I used to. I'm figuring the short white ones are what I remember to be in a "regular desktop" PC as a PCI slot.

Thanks.
 
I just found a full schematic on the inside of the case cover, thanks HP.

The slots bottom to top are

(2) PCI-X 100;
(1) PCI-X 133;
(1) PCI-Express x8 prime (?)
(1) PCI
(1) PCI-Express x16 graphics
(1) PCI

I'm thinking a regular PCI graphics should work fine.
 
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You can install a PCI graphics card into a PCI slot, yes. The choices will be pretty limited since PCI is a very old interconnection and is slow. I would suggest you try a different PCI-E graphics card.

PCI-E, PCI-X, and PCI are not interchangeable. PCI-X is a weird one typically found in special workstations and servers.
 
Usually the mobo is optimised for1x16anything added tothe other slot usually affect(slow dwn the top slot (in your case thse 1x16)
 
What graphics card do you have now? It sounds like a driver issue, do you know which driver you're using for the card?
 
Yeah, PCI is pretty old and any video cards you might have/find that use it will probably be worse than any PCIEx16 option. What card is it and what driver are you using?
 
>PCI graphics cards

No. Bad idea. PCI is terrible for graphics in modern computers. First I'd make sure you have the latest linux compatible drivers for your graphics card. And if that doesn't fix it, look into a different PCIe graphics card.
 
Device is a Nvidia QuadroFX 540;

I was using VESA drivers under Fedora and CentOS7 and SuSE. The CPU was pegged on the display process and the load quickly increased.

The same behavior under Ubuntu; I am reloading ubuntu, but pretty sure the compiz process displays the same behavior; high CPU. I'm going to poke around the NVidia site; I see there are some driver install scripts there for linux. I didn't have much luck with the ubuntu supplied NVidia either. I'll try that again and report back.

I'm unlikely to try a different PCIe card; I'm not a gamer; At this point I just need something that works, I'd rather not relegate it to a command line machine.
 
Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
Device is a Nvidia QuadroFX 540;

I was using VESA drivers under Fedora and CentOS7 and SuSE. The CPU was pegged on the display process and the load quickly increased.

The same behavior under Ubuntu; I am reloading ubuntu, but pretty sure the compiz process displays the same behavior; high CPU. I'm going to poke around the NVidia site; I see there are some driver install scripts there for linux. I didn't have much luck with the ubuntu supplied NVidia either. I'll try that again and report back.

I'm unlikely to try a different PCIe card; I'm not a gamer; At this point I just need something that works, I'd rather not relegate it to a command line machine.


I still don't see why you would buy an old pci card. They don't make anything even remotely recent on pci. You can get a pcie Radeon 5450 for $40 or less if you don't care about gaming.
 
a minimal amount of research on the web shows that nvidia cards often do not play nice with Linux because nvidia chooses to keep things tightly under wraps.

PCIe is NOT your issue, nVidia is. get an ancient PCI card and your performance will be WORSE.
 
The nVidia cards aren't that bad on Linux at all. They're actually some of the better supported ones, and things have gotten substantially better than they were three or four years ago. Of course, getting a legacy card isn't going to help matters at all.
wink.gif
 
nVidia has their own drivers available under Ubuntu, they usually need to be activated and installed seperately with the driver app. I've been running several machines that use nVidia cards (desktop and laptop) and have no problems. What I have found is that the system monitors available in Linux use a ton of system resources just to tell you what your system load is.

I have a box with a quad core i5 that runs just about any game out there overclocked to 4.5gHz and system monitor will show a 50% load at idle and the fans start to ramp up. Shut down system monitor and the temps settle down and load drops off.
 
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