Windows 7 - new pci-express 2.0 (or 1.0) graphics card to buy..?

yesterday i discovered that my motherboard (asus p5lp-le) doesn't support pci-express 2.1, used by all Radeon 5xxx and 6xxx series. i bought an HD 5670 and it failed...
there are not updates for my bios, so pci-e 2.1 will never work on my mobo

today i will buy a new graphics card on the same shop i took the HD 5670.
my budget is 80€ (price of the old card that i will return) and another 40€.... 120€ in total.

i need pci express 2.0 (NO 2.1) or pci express 1.0, and i have only 1 6pin connector on my pc.
i was looking for radeon 47xx-48xx series, or for nvidia (that uses pci-e 2.0 in all his cards). nvidia also uses physix and dx11, radeon 4xxx series uses only dx10.1 (and no physix)...

if possible i want a grapics card similar to the HD 5670 and with GDDR5 memory (512mb or 1gb)
the old card i have (that comes with my pc) is a Radeon X1650 (512Mb ddr2)... all i need is a performance boost to play games at better graphics setting and to run Windows 7 Aero, Media Center and videos with good performance.

what should i take ?

When you say it failed, what exactly happened?


PCI Express is backwards compatabile.
Also, PCI Express 2.0 and 2.1 are basically the same thing.
2.1 just introduced support for some newer features, but they run at the same speed & are still backward compatable with older technology.

If your current board is a PCI-X 1.0, it should work without issue. It is quite possible you had a bad card.

my mobo isn't compatible with pci-e 2.1:
when i try to turn on my pc with the hd 5670 plugged-in, monitor says "no signal" and nothing work. only fans run.

other people have this problem, but only with hd 5xxx series (that have pci-e 2.1)

so i must take a pci-e 2.0 or 1.0 card... what one?

Well that is wierd because they are backwards compatable.

The only other thing I can suggest is looking in the bios and see if theres a setting for the Graphics. PEG, PCI, PCIExpress etc and set it appropriately.

Beyond that, it will be hard to say which PCI 2.0 card to get. Since 2.0 and 2.1 are essentially the same, most manufacturers only put PCI-e 2.0 in the specs.


Not sure what to suggest ... Perhaps others may have more knowl;edge of that particular board and can offer better advice.

They are backwards compatible, but in some instances they just don't work. It could be a faulty card as these things happen, but only way to find out is plugging it into another pc.

You do have the 4/8 pin pci power cable plugged into the top left of the motherboard don't you?

yes, if i haven't the 4pin cable plugged in pci-e would not have power and HD 5670's fan would not run...

pci-e 2.0 should work.
pci-e 2.1 doesn't work because there's an incompatibility with my mobo...

i tried ALL to run this HD 5670... but nothing works!

No if you didn't have the 4/8pin pci power connected the fans would still spin as you have a power cable(s) plugged directly into the graphics card itself.

The 4/8 pin pci connector power just the pci slots, not the card, and having it unplugged results in the "no signal" message..

my HD 5670 doesn't need a power cable... all i need is a pci-express slot and a 400W power supply unit (i have 600W).

(when i insert my old card, the X1650SE, all work perfectly)

i bought a PNY Geforce GTS 450 XLR8 (performance edition). it supports pci-express 2.0, so it should work with my mobo.
also i found in other forums that some users can run this GPU on Asus P5LP-LE mobo (mine).

let's test it tomorrow!

it works!!