Zotac Releases GeForce GT 520 With Classic PCI Connector

jones_supa writes "It turns out that you can still get a legacy PCI graphics card with a modern GPU. In this case it's a Nvidia Geforce GT 520 card provided by Zotac. Both the PCI and PCIe x1 variants feature a GT 520 graphics chip with 48 stream processors, 512MB of DDR3 memory, a 810MHz core clock speed, a 1333MHz memory speed, and a 64-bit memory interface."

Comments

Performance

[Spad]

PCI slots cap at 533 MB/s (and a lot are 133 or 266), which is less than a tenth of most PCIe x16 slots, so I can't imagine that you're going to be making the most of the hardware somehow.

Re:Performance

[vlm]

Also, cards like these often have a lot of media playback capabilities that aren't bandwidth-hungry. This could likely, for example, allow an old clunker system to be upgraded to Blu-Ray capabilities fairly cheaply.

GT520 should run VDPAU acceleration pretty well... It takes practically zero CPU power to shovel bits at the video card. This means practically any old box out there is an instant HDMI output mythtv frontend. Obviously I haven't tried it, but it should work fantastic.

Re:Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are doing bitcoin mining a better use of the card would be sharpening it and driving it into your skull.

Ideal for HTPC

[0100010001010011]

There are a TON of older computers that people still run with PCI slots. They would work just fine repurposed as a HTPC but until now there was no hardware acceleration available. The XBMC Forums will have someone come along that is looking for the "Best" PCI option and usually that involves either an SVIDEO or VGA connector. Some new TVs will have a VGA but not all of them.

SERVERS!!!

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

If the form factor is correct, then plenty of recent Xeon/Opteron servers, with a free PCI slot, suddenly become AWESOME desktop platforms. Around here, you can get late model 4-core Xeons, with maybe 8GB of RAM, on Craigslist, from name-brand companies [HP, Dell, etc], for circa $500. And they will be of VASTLY higher quality [with esp. vastly better motherboards] than the consumer-oriented junk that those same companies are peddling.

Re:SERVERS!!!

[erikscott]

There are an awful lot of PCI slots in all sorts of embedded systems out there, and some of them may be looking for a graphics upgrade. For that matter, I still have instruments that have EISA slots in them. I suspect I'll be running them for another decade. 10Base2 is getting to be a pain to deal with, though.

Oh, SO going into my Alpha Personal Workstation...

[derinax]

I'm hoping it's got a bog-standard PCI interface specification, so that the old PWS console firmware works with it. The PWS 600au works great with an ATI Radeon 9000, NetBSD + X11. Not so sure about the xorg support for the GT520 though. We'll see.

Re:You can also still buy carburetors

[hairyfeet]

I actually LIKE articles like this, as it gives me info on another option for my customers that are looking to upgrade to Win 7 but whose box doesn't have PCIe. I've found Windows 7 can run quite decently on a 2.2GHz P4 with 2Gb of RAM but there are a hell of a lot of machines out there without PCIe and AGP cards are frankly crazy high now.

I just really wish someone would make some Radeon HD5xxx and 6xxx cards with AGP and make them sub $50 like they did for awhile with the HD2xxx and 3xxx cards. There are a lot of late model P4s that can easily and cheaply be upgraded to the Pentium D (I buy them all day long for less than $20 a chip) which works great even on MMOs like LOTRO and Perfect World but Windows 7 runs so much better and videos are so much smoother with a decent GPU for DXVA. With the economy still nasty having affordable options is always of the good in my book, So I like hearing about stuff like this and don't forget XP is still supported until 2014 so that is a hell of a lot of boxes out there that could run better with a GPU boost.