Question PCI-e version compatibility on new motherboards

[PingSpike]

I have some weird old video cards I'm trying out in a modern system. I've got a brand new MSI gaming plus x470 motherboard and x1700. I'd like it to become an unraid server at some point.

I purchased this card: https://www.amazon.com/SUNIX-Graphi...TF8&qid=1546344932&sr=8-1&keywords=Volari+Z11 Mainly because it uses 2 watts and I only needed it to display linux command prompt on a server. I'd never really heard of a Volari Z11 to be honest but it sounds pretty gutless. That said, I was using an old PCI card to perform this kind of duty but PCI is disappearing. But the card doesn't work with the motherboard. It does work on another old Phenom II machine I have. I even installed it in a separate slot with a different graphics card and booted, then checked lspci and the bios to confirm they couldn't even see the card.

On the company's website its listed as PCI-e 1.1. In theory that shouldn't be a problem. From experience, it probably is related. I have a bizarre nvidia PCX 5750 card (this is a FX5700 combined with a AGP to PCI-e bridge chip) which I remember refusing to work in the PCI-e 3.0 slot of a FM2+ motherboard I have. It did work without complaint in the 4x electrical PCI-e 2.0 slot on the same board though.

I've tried all the slots on this board though and haven't had any luck. It doesn't look like the bios as the option to control the PCI-e standard that some have. Am I out of luck or is there something else that might be going on? I thought I might run into issues with this but its a bit frustrating since nobody really makes a discrete graphics card for pci-e that is ultra low power usage.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I suppose the reason your PCI card doesn't work is that newer chipsets don't have native PCI anymore. Which means a bridge chip is required, and those are hit-or-miss with compatibility. Older PCIe (particularly PCIe 1.1) cards can be hit-or-miss too with newer boards.

While not exactly what you're looking for, this might be an option. Frees up the main PCIe slots too.
https://www.zotac.com/dk/product/graphics_card/geforce®-gt-710-1gb-pcie-x-1

It's a GT710 so it should be broadly supported.

 

[PingSpike]

I suppose the reason your PCI card doesn't work is that newer chipsets don't have native PCI anymore. Which means a bridge chip is required, and those are hit-or-miss with compatibility. Older PCIe (particularly PCIe 1.1) cards can be hit-or-miss too with newer boards.

While not exactly what you're looking for, this might be an option. Frees up the main PCIe slots too.
https://www.zotac.com/dk/product/graphics_card/geforce®-gt-710-1gb-pcie-x-1

It's a GT710 so it should be broadly supported.

Yes, that's kind of the problem with PCI. Its going away. Actually the bridge chips are OK enough in my other machines, there's a plethora of old ultra low power PCI cards around so you could probably dance around incompability. But its clear they're almost gone at this point. One nice part about them for this is many (not all) motherboards give you the option to boot to them. Sometimes they only have "PCIe, IGP, PCI" as an option but it works well for my case.

I actually have a GT710. It still idles at like 6-7watts. AMD has similar cards. That's like $9/year! It adds up!

 

[LTC8K6]

Since the video card won't ever be doing much, any card you pick will be using very little power. It will mostly be idling all the time.
Theres a GT705 OEM card if you can locate one.

 

[LTC8K6]

That GT1030 with GDDR4 is probably very low idle power, given that the GDDR5 version is about 8 watts.

 

[PingSpike]

That GT1030 with GDDR4 is probably very low idle power, given that the GDDR5 version is about 8 watts.

Hmmm, Its more than I want to spend but I'll take a look at it. Techspot seems to suggest the 1050 can idle at 4watts which is a new low.

 

[LTC8K6]

Yes the 3gb 1050 looks good as well for low idle power.

 

[LTC8K6]

There is also the 45W tdp 2700E coming out for power savers.

 

[PingSpike]

There is also the 45W tdp 2700E coming out for power savers.

Interested to see the reviews and prices on those. On the Intel side my experience with the low power variants was they usually didn't seem to idle any lower than a regular chip and cost more.

 

[LTC8K6]

Yes, but during workloads they should save power.

The extra cost might make it a poor choice, but hopefully with Zen+ that isn't the case.

 

[Charlie22911]

What mode is your bios in, legacy or UEFI? It’s very likely that’s your problem. Legacy option roms that need to execute on boot up for things like resource allocation won’t execute under a strict UEFI environment and likely won’t work.

 

[hojnikb]

That GT1030 with GDDR4 is probably very low idle power, given that the GDDR5 version is about 8 watts.

No such thing as GDDR4 (not for a while now anyway). It uses plain ol' DDR4.

 

[LTC8K6]

No such thing as GDDR4 (not for a while now anyway). It uses plain ol' DDR4.

Yeah but we all knew what I meant.

 

[PingSpike]

What mode is your bios in, legacy or UEFI? It’s very likely that’s your problem. Legacy option roms that need to execute on boot up for things like resource allocation won’t execute under a strict UEFI environment and likely won’t work.

This is a good idea that actually kind of occurred to me yesterday. I looked through the bios but actually couldn't find the option to switch (I believe its usually called CSM? on Ryzen systems). I'm not sure if the board lacks this option or if I just missed it since it was late and I ran out of time. The closest thing was Windows 10 WQHL or whatever mode but it was already disabled. Time to compare some manuals I guess.

I still thought the device would show up in lspci even with uefi but maybe not.

Edit: Looks like there is an option under the boot menu I must have missed.

 

[PingSpike]

Well, just an update on this. I confirmed the bios was set for legacy+uefi the whole time. Then I tried some older cards I had. The nvidia PCX 5750 did not work either. A x1300 did actually work though, which is a slightly newer card but I believe still PCI-e 1.0 or 1.1.

So honestly I'm not sure why they aren't compatible now. I feel like the x1300 predates UEFI but in all cases I was just installing as a secondary card and seeing if it was even detected anyway.

Edit: From reading around it seems a lot of people had detection issues with graphics cards. A common story I'm reading is a device will only work in the secondary graphics slot...no other slots work. That's weird and not very helpful to me but I guess I'll try it to confirm. I wasn't aware of these kind of issues otherwise I'm not sure I would have bought a Ryzen. It might not matter to me in the end but I wasn't really expecting these kind of constraints.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

So honestly I'm not sure why they aren't compatible now. I feel like the x1300 predates UEFI but in all cases I was just installing as a secondary card and seeing if it was even detected anyway.

One reason they might be or not be is what type of vBIOS is on the card. That's right. The card itself has a BIOS. Which can be either legacy BIOS or UEFI. Now, UEFI based vBIOS usually have a compatibility layer so it works on older boards with a legacy BIOS.

It works the other way too. An older legacy vBIOS might not work in a UEFI environment, even with CSM enabled.

A few(?) years ago this bit a lot of users with older pre-UEFI systems (Sandy Bridge/Nehalem), particularly with MSI cards.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I had some generic 6600GT (remember those? Early PCI-E cards), then when plugged into a Via-chipset P4 mobo, that not only wouldn't boot properly, but would require a CMOS clear before the board would boot again (without that card).