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I'm getting ready to FINALLY buy a new vid card, a 6800GT.  I was wondering how I tell whether my comp has an AGP or PCI slot.  I currently have a 5200 FX 128M  :-/

I'm getting ready to FINALLY buy a new vid card, a 6800GT.  I was wondering how I tell whether my comp has an AGP or PCI slot.  I currently have a 5200 FX 128M  :-/

A PCI slot is always white and close to the edge of the motherboard.  There usually will be 3-8 of them aligned next to each other (unless you have a mini-ITX board...like a shuttle computer or a Mega651). Soundcards, TV tuner cards, and others will use this slot.

There will only ever be one AGP slot on a motherboard.  It will be set farther back and is brown/dark tan in color.  Only Video cards can use this slot.



NOW WAIT!  Before you rush out an buy a new card, there is a catch.

See, PCI and PCI-Express are COMPLETELY different!  If you are looking to buy a PCI-Express video card, you need to have a motherboard that supports PCI-Express.  You will want to kick your own rear end if you try to plug an Express card into a regular PCI slot...it won't fit.


You can see three regular PCI slots here.  The black slot is for PCI-Express (16x) and the tiny slots are for PCI-Express extenders (1x)

Thanks bschott!

I'm pretty sure I have AGP... I see what appears to be a brown slot with a big red card stickin out of it.

I can set up networks, image new computers and reformat old ones, troubleshoot every type of network problem on earth, and I don't know what a frickin' video card looks like

hey, we all got questions at some point or another, means we are smart enough to say what a minute I think I better ask someone...

Another fool proof way is to download CPU-Z > http://www.cpuid.org/cpuz.php#download find out what kind of motherboard you have, and google it to find out what you really have. However since you have a prebuilt system its pretty safe to say its AGP 8X

I seem to recall prebuilts offering 4x agp support only, up to about a year ago.

4x AGP or 8x AGP depends on whether or not your chipset supports it, and 8x may need to be set in bios on some boards to enable it.

It would pay to check out your boards AGP support before buying an 8x 6800GT AGP card, as if it's only a 4x AGP system, you may not get the performance you would expect and wish you had taken a different upgrade route. Examples being a PCIe alternative (expensive) or the purchase of an "interim solution" such as a cheaper 6600GT until you upgrade the rest of your PC to a modern PCIe system.

My friend's comp has a green slot where the brown slot is-it's still AGP, right?

Yeah, each mobo manufacturor can use a different color if they want.