You will only find PCI Express on a system using an AMD Athlon II X2 215.
Are you sure?
I was just getting ready to order a video card today and thought I'd double check what kind of port I have. I went to Control Panel->System->Hardware->Device Manager and then brought up the properties for my video card. Among other things, I saw the following:
Location: PCI Bus 0, device 13, function 0
It says PCI and not PCIe, so it doesn't look like PCI Express.
OK, maybe it has both ports, but the card that came with it is just PCI. I downloaded a utility called GPU-Z that gives you info about your graphics card and such, and it also says the bus interface is PCI, but again that's for the card that is connected, so I'm still not sure if it has a PCIe port or not.
I tried googling AMD Athlon II X2 215 specs, and looked at a couple sites including amd.com, and neither told me anything about bus interfaces.
Unless someone can point me to something conclusive that will tell me whether I have PCIe or not, I'm thinking my options are to
1) Dig through my pile of computer junk in the closet trying to find the manual that came with the computer, which I'm not 100% sure I still have or
2) Take my computer apart and compare the ports to online pics and see if it looks like I have a PCIe one.
Sheesh, I wouldn't have thought this would be so hard to figure out.
Both options 1 and 2 kind of suck because I'm still not sure that would make me 100% sure unless I have the manual and it explicitly states in the specs that I have PCIe.
Would I see enough of a performance increase to get a regular PCI card if that's all I have, or should I just not bother? Can anyone point me to something definitive or give me advice on taking the PC apart and checking what ports it has?
Thanks in advance!