I might be being a dumbass here, but is there such a thing as a PCI Graphics Card?? Not PCI-E!! Ive been given a new PC from a good friend, its a HP DC7100. Its got a p4 3.0Ghz processor, 1Gb ram, 300Gb SATA drive etc, but onboard graphics. The only expansion slot available is one PCI slot..............

Yes, but they are getting rarer now. The slot also acts as a bottleneck

What do you mean a bottleneck??

Are they poo in general?? Dont want to spend my money if it isnt worth it.

Cheers

yeah.... theyre pretty poo compaired to the compertiton


all gfx cards used to be PCI
then the changed to AGP
and now its PCI-E

arrr right, i see! The only slot available is a PCI. Hmmm, will have to have a think.

What about a riser card? Had a look on ebay but couldnt find anything. Maybe thats not the name, damn this hangover.  

used to run my asterisk server on one of these before i got a DL380G4 for the job. Theyre designed as a basic business space saver desktop. Very little expansion capability. Worth about £70-90

You wont get a high performance PCI card anywhere, unless you manage to find yourself a voodoo 5 but even that is pee poor by todays standards.

Ive got a GeForce 5200 that fits in a PCI slot running my server.  I think they are about £30 if you want to pick one up.  I had to get it because the one in the server had blown.