Interesting - let us know if it works.

Just be aware that if you compare the bus speeds, PCI-E 1.0 x1 (what the adapter is) at 250MB/sec is actually a little slower than AGP 1x (266MB/sec). Once you put that through a normal PCI slot, that maximum speed drops to 133MB/sec.

I'm not sure how this would affect the card's performance, but presumably anything that has to go between the CPU/RAM and the card would run at half the speed of native PCI-E 1.0 1x, or AGP 1x.

But it would certainly seem to be a cheaper way of getting HDMI/DisplayPort output from an older PC. I wonder what DOS support is like? Can you run CGA/EGA games with a card like this?

Malvineous wrote:

Interesting - let us know if it works.

Just be aware that if you compare the bus speeds, PCI-E 1.0 x1 (what the adapter is) at 250MB/sec is actually a little slower than AGP 1x (266MB/sec). Once you put that through a normal PCI slot, that maximum speed drops to 133MB/sec.

^+1
And with PCI conventional the 133MB/s max bandwidth is shared by everything on the bus.

There are also x16 to PCI Adapters.
So you can use cheaper PCIe Cards.
It just works, i used one in a Dual PIII even a 8800GT works with it.
Games that do heavy textures streaming will bottlenecked by PCI.
Others will just work fine only loading will take a few seconds longer..

matze79 wrote:

There are also x16 to PCI Adapters. So you can use cheaper PCIe Cards. It just works, i used one in a Dual PIII even a 8800GT wo […]
Show full quote

There are also x16 to PCI Adapters.
So you can use cheaper PCIe Cards.
It just works, i used one in a Dual PIII even a 8800GT works with it.
Games that do heavy textures streaming will bottlenecked by PCI.
Others will just work fine only loading will take a few seconds longer..

On that note... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQuZE1jYIpo

Still, I'm kinda interested to see how well a x1 card works, if at all, in something like a P-III.

matze79 wrote:

There are also x16 to PCI Adapters. So you can use cheaper PCIe Cards. It just works, i used one in a Dual PIII even a 8800GT wo […]
Show full quote

There are also x16 to PCI Adapters.
So you can use cheaper PCIe Cards.
It just works, i used one in a Dual PIII even a 8800GT works with it.
Games that do heavy textures streaming will bottlenecked by PCI.
Others will just work fine only loading will take a few seconds longer..

I figured a PCIe x1 card would be bottlenecked already. Putting a PCIe x16 card on the PCI bus would be just as slow even if you used a high end card like a Titan.

I have an 8400GS with the bridge chip built in the PCB (x1 1.0 to PCI 32bit), and for some games it works as you expect (for a 8400GS) but for a lot of them the PCI bottleneck is quite bad, so I wouldn't recommend using one, it managed to be slower than a voodoo 4500 (native PCI) in some tests.

also, some PCIE cards can pull 75W just from the slot alone, and these adapters are normally not built for VGAs/high power usage cards, it can be a problem.

x16 cards can pull 75W, x1 cards are limited to 25W (and most of them are actually 10W). 25W is within the spec of PCI, so the slot can provide it, but not more than that. Therefore, it is probably safer to stay within the realms of PCIe x1 to PCI. As you said, there are no practical benefits otherwise.

Actually, I am pretty sure that even those x16 PCIe to PCI adapters, or at least the reasonable ones, are electrically just x1. Meaning, the extra pins are not connected, and any card you put there will run electrically as x1.

dr_st wrote:

Actually, I am pretty sure that even those x16 PCIe to PCI adapters, or at least the reasonable ones, are electrically just x1. Meaning, the extra pins are not connected, and any card you put there will run electrically as x1.

I also believe this is true. - The x16 plastic allows more cards to physically fit but it doesn't add any more lanes.
.
The PCI-E to PCI conventional adapters are not really intended for video cards. More for things like SATA or USB add-in cards.
.

Dual Titan SLI in a Pentium MMX or something, somebody do it.

SRQ wrote:

Dual Titan SLI in a Pentium MMX or something, somebody do it.

386 with Titan X SLI pls

I'm trying to wrap my brain around how this thing would possibly work, software wise. Even my AGP Radeon HD3850 needs a special driver to cope with its PCIe-AGP bridge, and it's a factory designed & built card specifically made to do that. Is there a driver for this that does the bus translation in software or what?

xjas wrote:

I'm trying to wrap my brain around how this thing would possibly work, software wise. Even my AGP Radeon HD3850 needs a special driver to cope with its PCIe-AGP bridge, and it's a factory designed & built card specifically made to do that. Is there a driver for this that does the bus translation in software or what?

the VGA driver sees the card as running PCIE x1, it's a lot simpler than the PCIE to AGP stuff, there is no special driver required (the bridge chip have it's own driver but windows should install it with no problem, I actually had a few problems with the bridge chip on win7/8.1, but 0 problems on XP and 10)

also, I've seen people doing the opposite, using an adapter to run a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI on a PCIE slot also with no problems (with the intent to force PCI 66MHz speeds)

there are x16 Adapters with additional Power Connector, of you can add it yourself.
So this is no issue.
The Mainreason for using a 8400GS whas to add video encoding in hardware to Atom Like platforms
And PCI had enough bandwith for encoding video streams 😀

matze79 wrote:

there are x16 Adapters with additional Power Connector, of you can add it yourself. So this is no issue. The Mainreason for usin […]
Show full quote

there are x16 Adapters with additional Power Connector, of you can add it yourself.
So this is no issue.
The Mainreason for using a 8400GS whas to add video encoding in hardware to Atom Like platforms
And PCI had enough bandwith for encoding video streams 😀

yes, the video acceleration works well for some softwares, but not all, some will hit the PCI bottleneck really hard, like trying to watch a video on the web browser is quite bad (even with a fast CPU)

but when it all works, you can run HD h264 videos with a low clocked pentium 3.

MrEWhite wrote:

SRQ wrote:

Dual Titan SLI in a Pentium MMX or something, somebody do it.

386 with Titan X SLI pls

PCI didn't come out until late in the 486 era.

And even many modern PCI Cards don't work in old PCI Slots..

Including Radeon 7000 and GeForce 2

Sutekh94 wrote:

On that note... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQuZE1jYIpo

So this suggests that large amounts of video memory (over 1GB) is a concern. I do have a 1GB GTX650ti, 768MB 8800GTX and 640MB 8800GTS laying around, might order one of these adapters and see how well they might perform with my P3 or even P166 system 😎

Would be nice to see how those stack up against Voodoo's 🤣

Munx wrote:

Sutekh94 wrote:

On that note... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQuZE1jYIpo

So this suggests that large amounts of video memory (over 1GB) is a concern.

How so. I don't see anything at all that suggests that.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Munx wrote:

Sutekh94 wrote:

On that note... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQuZE1jYIpo

So this suggests that large amounts of video memory (over 1GB) is a concern.

How so. I don't see anything at all that suggests that.

Just rewatched the video and I cant seem to find it either, maybe its just something I thought to myself the first time I saw it 🤣