Need Video card suggestion and terminology help (solved)

[gll99]

Due to an unfortunate accident I lost my Asus mobo that had simultaneous vga and hdmi out. I picked up a used older case / E2180 cpu and board real cheap. The Mboard is an ASRock Wolfdale 1333-D667 which lets me salvage my 4GB ddr2 ram from my lost pc. I've resolved or accepted most of the other limitations of the board but the onboard video only has a single vga connector and that's the pits.

I'm looking at this video card to help carry some of the load especially Bluray playback from my BD rom. It's an ASUS Radeon HD 5450 EAH5450 SILENT / DI / 1GD3(LP) 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 which sells around $49 locally. I'm not the biggest ATI fan but it looks like this card will do the job. I'm just wondering if there are any PCIE compatibility issues.

The AsRock manual doesn't specify the rev of the PCIE x16 slot while this Asus (ATI) video card says it's 2.1. Does anyone know if that could be an issue or if there is anything else to take into consideration?

[starkline]

You should be fine. PCIe revision is backward compatible, so even if your new card was 2.1 and your board was 2.0, it would work (in most cases). Albeit, the card wouldn't have the full bandwidth that it could use, but it would work.

The only thing I would do is run a few google searches on you board model and GPU model. See if you can find anyone else that has posted regarding your desired setup.

That's something you should do regardless.

[gll99]

Unfortunately it looks like I'm up the creek on this one. Bad enough that ATI (AMD) video cards apparently don't play nice with Intel chipsets but I finally found a thread that actually provided some useful although unsettling information. It was suggested to download PC Wizard and check the rev that way.

Turns out the x16 slot is PCIe REV1.0 and it will only run at the original minimal speed. It looks like most newer cards that might have Bluray assist will not work even though the form factor of the PCIe slot is x16.

I'm hoping someone might be using a more modern cheap graphics (hd compatible) card with an older ASRock board like this and convince me otherwise.

[gll99]

The search results are contradictory making it hard to decide. While a few have reported problems with card models such as the ATI 5450 and 5780 models and PCIe rev 1.0 and rev1.0a, a couple of people have mentioned success with a similar PCIe and an 8800gt on an AMD board back in 2007. You can never be sure if user error is involved. Many have just outright commented that rev 1.0 lots are not compatible and that you need at least PCIe 1.0a or above to use a PCIe rev 2.0 or better device, Too bad those who make these statements don't offer any personal fact based experience to back up those claims. Some might just be repeating a mantra. I need hard evidence from those who have tried it and have overcome or not overcome issues after dismissing common problems through trial and error. One common oversight would be someone forgetting to disable an on-board device when inserting a PCIe card which some Mboards require to avoid conflicts. Others might be OS issues or yet again driver based. I like those who report something like ("I use this OS, this motherboard, this cpu, this (video) card and this is what I've done") and then report back when they get suggestions.

According to this site all manufacturers should be adhering to a voluntary code where every slot and device is backwards compatible although at the sacrifice of the slower slot speed. Even PCIe 3.0 devices are supposed to work on older boards with a lower speed rated PCIe slot.

http://www.pcisig.com/news_room/faqs/

Here's a partial quote:

Q: Is PCIe 2.0 backward compatible with PCIe 1.1 and 1.0?

A: Yes. The PCIe Base 2.0 specification supports both the 2.5GT/s and 5GT/s signaling technologies. A device designed to the PCIe Base 2.0 specification may support 2.5GT/s, 5GT/s or both. However, a device designed to operate specifically at 5GT/s must also support 2.5GT/s signaling....

Bold in the quote is mine but notice the use of the words "may support" and then must! One could read the "may support" in 2 ways. Either the device may or may not support the 2.5GT/s speed or it could also mean that it is acceptable that a "PCIe Base 2.0 specification" device might only work at the slower 2.5GT/s. I tend to believe they mean the second interpretation based on the second part of the quote "must also support 2.5GT/s signaling....".

The voluntary part is what still concerns me.

I recall from a few years ago many potential buyers (me also) had similar questions that some non standard ASRock transitional Mboards with an AGP slot that was locked at 4x and wasn't compatible with many AGP video cards. They had a list of compatible ones for each board so I'm not sure if the same problem exists with their PCIe.


Unfortunately just as they often do here people report or complain about a problem but after receiving suggestions they often don't come back to confirm their success or lack thereof. I'm guilty if it myself. Too many threads end up incomplete to be of much use.

I'll consider this for another week or so and then decide. I hate to waste the money on something I won't be able to use. If I knew it would work I would probably prefer go for a near $80-$100 1GB DDR3 card but there are a couple of lesser cards (512mb DDRII) for around $40 that I might consider trying just to satisfy my curiosity. The question might still be Nvidia or ATI.

btw) For the sake of those who search this subject later and come across this thread. If I do buy a video card I'll report back. If nothing is added assume I didn't buy one yet and you may consider the question still unresolved.

[aedipuss]

i have a gtx 460 w/ 2gb ddr5 card working just fine in a pci-e 16x (1.0) slot. the motherboard has a p35 chipset. the slot only runs at the original 250 MB/s. it handles some of the most recent games fine - like witcher 2 on high quality setting.

[gll99]

i have a gtx 460 w/ 2gb ddr5 card working just fine in a pci-e 16x (1.0) slot. the motherboard has a p35 chipset. the slot only runs at the original 250 MB/s. it handles some of the most recent games fine - like witcher 2 on high quality setting.

That's good news. I'm not 100% sure if that applies to ASRock boards because they have done some oddball things but looks like there is hope after all. The Intel chipset on this board is i945G. I don't need to go as high specs as you since I'm not a gamer . I just want to watch 1080p BD movies from a BD rom and 1080i video caps from my Hauppauge without glitches on pc and also be able to output to my 46" tv via hdmi when I want to. All thats needed is the output to be hdmi compliant and the card to be able to play the video smoothly.

There are references to both PCIe 1.0 and 1.0a but haven't found anything to explain the difference. There are quite a few comments that seem to show that PCIe 1.0a works with the newer cards but none say plain v1.0. I googled "PCIe 1.0 vs 1.0a" and other variations but all that comes up is comparisons between 1.0a and 2.0 or links where both 1.0 and 1.0a are mentioned in the same sentence but not compared to each other. Wikipedia just says "In 2003, PCI-SIG introduced PCIe 1.0a, with a data rate of 250 MB/s and a transfer rate of 2.5 GT/s.". They only have separate entries for 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0. They don't even mention 1.0 as being a separate standard. Maybe people are mixing the terms in their comments and 1.0 and 1.0a are the same.

I forgot to mention that I emailed ASRock as I started the thread with a list of video cards that I'm looking at to see what they say. I received the standard form letter automated confirmation but being the weekend I'm still waiting to be contacted.

[gll99]

For the sake of those who search later and end up here:

This is the answer I received from ASROCK when I asked them if they could guarantee any video hdcp compatible cards that would work with their ASRock Wolfdale 1333-D667 (socket 775) motherboard, Bios v 1.10, PCIe 1.0, E2180 cpu.

Hi,

There are two gfx card we have tried and it works

Ati 5870 and ATi 6850

Nvidia GTS250 and GTX 470.

Hope this information helpful.

ASROCK
Tech Support Team

I haven't had time yet to research these specific products today to see if they meet my needs, price and local availability but it looks like I'm back in the game. I'm starting to think that anything along similar product lines will probably work so the cheaper the better. Considering there was a weekend between the question and answer I have to commend ASROCK for answering pretty quickly.

[aedipuss]

Hi,

There are two gfx card we have tried and it works

Ati 5870 and ATi 6850

Nvidia GTS250 and GTX 470.

Hope this information helpful.

ASROCK
Tech Support Team

in my world that would be 4 cards, and really bad grammer. i'd give them a pass on the bad grammer for translation problems, but not being able to count to 4???

i'd say from the response any card will work.

( i really thought i responded to the asus reply before so sorry if 2 show up later?? )

[Bix]

You should be fine. PCIe revision is backward compatible, so even if your new card was 2.1 and your board was 2.0, it would work (in most cases).

FWIW, what are the exceptions?

[gll99]

I finally bought a card. This is poor for drama but to remove any suspense the installation was easy and it works well.

Now for the nuts and bolts:
The one I bought is the Asus GT520 Silent 1GB ddr3 and it cost $62.

http://usa.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/NVIDIA_Series/ENGT520_SILENTDI1GD3LP/#overview

Before anyone posts some groans how it's not good for games there are other reasons why I chose this model.

First I'm not a gamer. On the performance charts you'll find this one in the low range but I was more interested in its other features related to BR playback, DX11, no fan, price etc... as specified on the Asus site.

One thing I found out is that there has been an evolution in BD and HD support with almost all generations of cards. The GT 520 although it is an entry level card for the 500 chipset has all the functionality of the "The Fifth Generation PureVideo HD" GPU.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo

For me this was the best card for the job of playing HD video in a low price range.

btw) Some points of note:

This card does not use an extra power adapter. The installation guide recommends a case fan. On this Mboard I left the original onboard video connected the original monitor and plugged an hdmi cable to the new card and my 46" tv. I expected the original monitor to still be the main one until I installed the drivers but I was surprised to see the desktop come up on the tv with no signal to the onboard vga . I had read that the opposite would happen but no foul either way is fine. After installing the drivers and nVidia software I rebooted but at the same time switched the vga from the onboard to the new video card. The Device manager shows only the nVidia GT 520 display adapter is installed so the mboard obviously checks the PCIe slot for an adapter and only recognizes that one. Although there is a bios option to disable the onboard video I didn't touch it. I haven't checked yet to see if it's automatically disabled in the bios but either way it's not an issue. I still have to dig out a dvi cable and substitute it for the vga to see if both digital ports are active on this card at the same time (dvi + hdmi). I tested single monitor mode, clone mode and Dual View and they all work fine. I have both Powerdvd 11 the trial version and an updated PowerDVD 7.3 that came with my BD rom both work well on hdmi with sound. I also tested a few 1080i files on my hdd originally captured with my Hauppauge USB PVR and they are crystal clear with no glitches over hdmi.

I'm pleased with the results.