PCI to PCI-e?

Clarifications

The first issue that comes to mind is the "fit" of this device. It looks (from the picture) to raise the card you will be inserting by at least a half inch. This could cause you to lose access to some ports on the video card. You acknowledge the fact that performance will be affected but you should also consider that a standar PCI bus uses 3.3 and 5 volts while a PCI-E bus can use 3.3v volts, 5 volts and 12 volts. You might not have enough power to operate your video expansion card without errors. Depending on your expectations, it might be better to just invest in another motherboard that has a PCI-E card already installed.

First, your device drivers will be confused, it will also run very slow. Far slower than today's integrated graphics.

My guess would be that this would work, but could potentially run into speed or compatibility issues. My opinion would be that in terms of risk-vs-cost, and potential waste of time/money, it would make more sense to either swap the mobo or graphics card.

Note that the adapter card itself is plug-and-play compatible which means it needs to load windows drivers to work. Since a video card is an output device, it would have a better chance of working than something like a NIC, since the faster card would have no problem keeping up with the slower PCI bus.

Below is from http://www.directron.com/expressguide.html

Common Buses and their Max Bandwidth
PCI 132 MB/s
AGP 8X 2,100 MB/s
PCI Express 1x 250 [500]* MB/s
PCI Express 2x 500 [1000]* MB/s
PCI Express 4x 1000 [2000]* MB/s
PCI Express 8x 2000 [4000]* MB/s
PCI Express 16x 4000 [8000]* MB/s
PCI Express 32x 8000 [16000]* MB/s
USB 2.0 (Max Possible) 60 MB/s
IDE (ATA100) 100 MB/s
IDE (ATA133) 133 MB/s
SATA 150 MB/s
SATA II 300 MB/s
Gigabit Ethernet 125 MB/s
IEEE1394B [Firewire 800] ~100 MB/s*

* Note 1 - Since PCI Express is a serial based technology, data can be sent over the bus in two directions at once. Normal PCI is Parallel, and as such all data goes in one direction around the loop. Each 1x lane in PCI Express can transmit in both directions at once. In the table the first number is the bandwidth in one direction and the second number is the combined bandwidth in both directions. Also please note that in PCI Express bandwidth is not shared the same way as in PCI, so there is less congestion on the bus.

Update: Table above contains speeds for PCI Express 1.0 bus. For version 2.0, multiply all bandwidths by 2. For example a PCI Express 2.0 16x slot has a max bandwidth of 8000 MB/s one way or 16000 MB/s both ways.

You can still get really fast PCI graphics cards today. There are some new DX11 cards that are made for a PCI slot. You can get good performance for casual gaming but it's not going to support the latest titles. Your motherboard is slowing you down. You should make a new build if you are serious about gaming.

As stated, you will get very slow if any performance out of a PCIe 16X graphics card with this setup.

Even a 1X PCIe card will run slower than normal through the adapter.

This kind of adapter is targeted at legacy systems that need to replace special function cards that are no longer available in PCI bus configurations. Or, if it just isn't acceptable at the present time to replace the motherboard / backplane in a system for just 1 PCIe card.

Chas

Thanks for the quick response. I am not so serious about gaming, I am serious about trying new things and seeing how it will work out. Put as I expected you all said that the bus speed wouldn't be able to handle it. I think I'll just look for other options.