Is PCI Express backward compatible?

T

torvalds

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 28, 2004
Messages
211
Would a 9800pro or 9700pro work on a PCI Express slot? I know that normal PCI componets will work.
 
No, PCI-E is a whole different slot than an AGP slot. It also consumes less power and has more bandwidth.

An AGP card will not work in a PCI-Express slot.

Dark Assassin
 
It's backwards compatible with PCI devices. Those cards you mentioned are AGP though, so they wouldn't work.
 
Normal PCI cards will NOT work in a PCI-E slot.

The transition to PCI Express is very similar to the one we currently making from Parallel ATA to Serial ATA hard drives. PCI, ISA and AGP are built on a Parallel interface and just like P-ATA, they are reaching the limits of the technology. The solution to this is PCI Express which uses a serial interface. Unlike AGP which only offered an upgrade to the graphics port, PCI-E offers a replacement for PCI as well.

So both slots use different signaling and are not compatable.

Luck...... :D
u=Tigerbiten.gif
 
PCI-E is compatible to PCI in one way... Its completely compatible in software. Just as SerialATA is completely software compatible to Parallel ATA.

Any OS that can use PCI devices will be able to use PCI-E devices with no special drivers.
 
Ryokurin said:
yep. tigerbitten is right. your thinking about pci-x which looks like it wont become popular at all. http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pcix_20
Click to expand...


well I wouldnt say that, its quite popular currently in the enterprise market
(servers > workstations)
but its not headed towards the desktop
there isnt going to be this huge, "Oh lets toss out all our 64bit PCI cards and reinvest"
thing going on in that market segment, so your likely to see both PCI Express and PCI-X on the same boards for a while
but alot of those slots will have older 64bit 66MHz cards in them
with a few 64bit 133MHz cards here and there
 
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