I am just thinking of add in another video card so that i can have 2 or 3 monitors from this desktop. I have not follow up with hardware for long times. Did a study from internet, so that i wouldn't buy wrong part from ebay.
Question1:
I see 4 PCIe slots on Dell Optiplex 755 tower desktop physically.
However from lspci, i only see 3 PCI bridge.. (i suppose PCI bridge = PCI slot ) ..
Could it possible that 1 of those PCI listed in lspci refering to 2 PCIe slots ?


Question2:
However no idea which type (PCIe 1.0 , 2.0, 3.0, 4.0)..
I am guessing "rev 02" (info from lspci) means it is PCIe 2.0 ?

2 same PCIe slot , unknown (no info at all) , 1 slot is currently used by PCIe network card already.
1 PCIe x1 10w
1 PCIe x16 (16,1) 75w <--- i suppose this is for graphic card ? currently my vga port is built in.


Question3:
I would like to know, is it possible to plug in a network PCIe card into the supposely graphic card PCIe slot (PCIe x16 75w)? no that i would do that, just wonder a PCIe slot for graphic card can be inter use by any ordinary PCIe card ?



Ohya, can anyone recommend me a PCIe video card that is suitable for this desktop ?
I think AMD gpu should be better right ? since linux and AMD is more compatible.
Any good price one ? i don't do gaming.. just for the sake of able to connect hopefully 2 hdmi monitors more.. if 2 hdmi graphic card is expensive, then i rather that 1 port.

Thx

Lets have a try:

Look around on your chips for a number on it's own (lower) line with four or occasionally three digits. It's a date code in the form YYWw where Y=year, and W= Workweek (1-52). So a datecode of "0728" would put you in July of 2007. Three didit date codes leave out the first 'Y' and repeat every 10 years. Estimated manufacture date within 6 months of the latest chip date, or just read one for a ballpark figure up to a year younger than the chip date.

Search engines give you release dates. Let us know what you have. A secondhand video card on Ebay sounds like the thing to get, although things are backward compatible usually.

With so much emphasis on PCI, I'd be guessing 15 years old?

I don't understand this part of it.. you meant there lspci and inxi does not provide any info on the pcie generation ?
The only way is to look at the IC chip code ? How do i know which ic chip to search for ?

What about search engine give release dates ? **sorry, i don't get it, i have being trying to google for this desktop model, but does not yield anything that i need.

"With so much emphasis on PCI" .. what did you meant by this as well ?

That's not a correct assumption. PCI/PCIe bridges appear in all manner of scenarios.
No, it means revision 2 of the component/chip in question.

However, from the "features" section of the datasheet for the 82801EB I/O Controller Hub (ICH):PCIe devices are backwards compatible. In fact, as long as you can physically fit a PCIe device into a slot, it should work, although there may be BIOS issues in some rare cases.

And speaking of BIOS issues:A PCIe slot is a PCIe slot, so it really ought to work. All any PCIe device requires, is power and a single PCIe 1.0 channel.

HOWEVER ... I've seen plenty of cases where a non-GPU PCIe device that would work fine in any other slot, simply failed to be recognized by the system if plugged into the primary PCIe-16 slot. I can think of no good reason why this should happen, and can only assume the BIOS is to blame.

The chip date is a way to cut to the chase quickly and just about any chip. A quick search on DDG gives a release date of 1993, so I guess it was available in the mid 1990s. But I think @Ser Olmy put this to bed for you.

I'd just add one thing: As this box dates from the last millenium, don't expect much in the way of graphics.

I did a ddg search using your search key phrase, but it does not yield any result to the production date.

However, according to lspci, i saw ICH9 written all over the list.. ICH9 was created in year 2007.. Only later i realized it is south bridge chipset which has got nothing to do with PCIe. .

Isn't this ICH is south bridge too ? which has got nothing to do with PCIe.


The next is "82801 PCI Bridge" which i suppose is North bridge chipset, but i have got no way to know the production year of it. Can't locate any info related to it.
If this is the chipset that controls PCIe slots, then:
"82801 PCI Bridge (rev 92)" according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I/O_Controller_Hub#ICH9, this ICH9 is produced on 2007.. so it should be that old as you as you said 1990s..





Why these chipset name is so similar ? are they refer to the same thing ? shld be not right ? because from wiki, i saw ICH chip has got many variant.. 82801I
eg:
82801IB (ICH9)
82801IR (ICH9R)
82801IH (ICH9DH)
82801IO (ICH9DO)
82801IBM (ICH9M)
82801IEM (ICH9EM)
82801IUX

Hence in lspci, it lists these variants:
82801I ICH9
82801 PCI Bridge (rev 92)
82801IO (ICH9DO)
82801IR/IO/IH
Same front 4 digits does it means they are produced for matching each other in the family ? which means the production date should be same..

The Optiplex 755 .pdf User Guide reports PCI v2.3, 1 PCIeX16 slot, 1 PCIeX1 slot, 2 PCI slots.

My Optiplexes, all newer or older than yours, are either running on their Intel IGPs, or on AMD PCIe cards. My newest overall discrete AMD gfxcard is an HD 8570, which is GCN1. My newest in an Optiplex is an HD 6450, Terascale 2, in an Optiplex 780.

IME, Optiplexes can run on either the IGP or a PCIe card, but not on both at the same time.

Look on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ocessing_units and find a card on eBay that is newer than Terascale 2 for best performance, preferably GCN3 or newer for least complicated Linux support. Overlaps in model numbers make such a selection tricky. Choose as new as you can afford.

The Service Tag on my Optiplex 760 says it was manufactured 2009-06-09. It currently has an AMD HD 5450, Terascale 2, installed.

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On the chipset names:
It's part of a Northbridge/Southbridge pair, I imagine. The letters after the numbers will be features.

ICH9 is the southbridge for the X38 or P35 or similar - this is an LGA 775 system likely with a Core 2 [something] (Duo, Quad, etc). It is likely PCIe Gen 2.0 but that's not something to worry about, as has been pointed out, because PCIe is backwards compatible by design - you can put a 2.0 card in a 1.0 or 3.0 or whatever slot, and vice versa. For graphics cards there's not a huge performance impact doing this even for gaming (example source: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/a...caling/18.html), but it can matter significantly for some I/O devices (e.g. 100Gb NICs need fairly high bandwidth back to the system, same for modern NVMe devices or RAID controllers).

I would concur with an AMD card - I'd probably go look for something based on AMD Oland, since that's GCN-powered, and will thus support the amdgpu driver (and therefore Vulkan). If you don't care about Vulkan there are also some nice Terascale-powered cards that would be suitable. Specific SKUs for Oland are things like the HD 8570, R5 240, R7 350, etc (you can go to this Wikipedia page for more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ocessing_units - of course any higher spec GCN will be equally compatible, but power consumption (and cost) will go up a lot). As I said if you don't care about Vulkan, Terascale is still perfectly able to drive Xorg or Wayland, and a model that I've good luck finding is the FirePro V4900.

Specifically having two HDMI ports on one card is quite rare, but what you'll find instead is cards with HDMI + DVI, or multiple DisplayPort outputs, and you will need to get adapters to HDMI (e.g. V4900 comes with DVI + 2 DP; you can use a passive plug adapter for DVI-to-HDMI and then get a DP-to-HDMI dongle to get 2 HDMI out, all of this is very cheap).

I would keep away from cards that need external power because the Dell may not have enough power supply capacity for it. Also you should clarify if the tower takes full height or half-height cards - V4900 is a 'full height' card, whereas a lot of those Oland-based cards are half-height.

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Thank you for replying in such detail. Like i said i have not touch computer hardware for years..
Hence every item you mentioned in the post, i have to google to find out what you said.
X38 is intel cpu chip
P35 i suppose also chip (i can't find it, only saw some mobo related.. I didn't go great depth into search each)
LGA 775 is mobo cpu socket type.
From all these, i can see you are really into computer hardware.. lol

I know this point.. the reason i want to know more, so that i won't waste money purchase a display card of pcie gen 4 just to plug into my low end pcie.. that would be wasting money. i am on low budge for such old tower.


I still don't understand what is NVMe.. care to enlighten me on this ?
From web:
NVMe (nonvolatile memory express) is a new storage access and transport protocol for flash and next-generation solid-state drives (SSDs) that delivers the highest throughput and fastest response times yet for all types of enterprise workloads.
Does it means NVMe is a protocol ? not hardware right ? it is a protocol for ssd ? I don't get it, why does it matter ? if it is just protocol, as long as the driver that support NVMe installed will be ok already isn't it ?

AMD's Oland :
is GPU uses the GCN 1.0 architecture and is made using a 28 nm (wow! 28nm is such a old chunky tech as compare to 3nm tech now) production process at TSMC (taiwan silicon manufacturer). Oland supports DirectX 12.
Graphics Core Next (GCN) :
codename for both a series of microarchitectures as well as for an instruction set architecture that was developed by AMD for their GPUs as the successor to their TeraScale microarchitecture/instruction set.
So Terascale is old stuff which Release date:May 2007 .. but since my pcie is also from year 2007 .. i should be able to use Terascale graphic card chipset according to what you said . older card might be cheaper.. cheaper than AMD oland GPU chip.


There are so many AMD GPU card listed in above, Is there website that enable me to search price for Any AMD oland GPU card with price tag ? and how do i know which are problem free card ? or some card maybe just expensive due to brand name which i don't need ?
I really don't know how to choose to purchase wisely.
I don't play game, just need extra monitors for daily browsing and reading and video watching while reading..

I did a quick checked out this older AMD GPU card Firepro V4900 .. it still costs almost 100 EURO !! wow! dinosaur age stuff so expensive..lol Am i missing something ? why terascale family gpu still cost so much ?
Did a quick check on one of the Oland GPu card (blindly picked a cheaper card) AMD Radeon R5 , it costs only 25euro. https://www.ebay.de/itm/165245274081
There is so many cards and brand.. i am really dazzled.

my last recalled involvement in graphic card was :
Radeon 7000 & 8000 series ( you can tell how long i have detached myself from hardware).


Thanks for telling me that.
BTW, (for example) since this V4900 has got 1 dvi, and 2 display ports.. does it means it actually can connect to 3 monitors ? or maybe some card are designed with more ports, but only 1 of them can be use at any one time. My laptop has got both HDMI and VGA port, but i can only connect either VGA or HDMI.. NOT BOTH at the same time.

My tower is 40cm (front to back length) , 17cm depth, 40cm height, is that call full height ? shld be right ? i know nowaday got game tower that is absolutely monstrous in size.

Appreciate your help.. Your post gave me a lot of hints..

Oh, you meant from the optiplex 755 user guide report: all 4 PCIe slots are using Gen2 ? hence V2.3..
How about the 2 PCI slots ? how many bus they have got ? it didn't mention.. x1 x4 x8 or x16 bus.
HD 6450
"https://www.ebay.de/itm/165245274081" 25euro
HD8570 GCN1.
"https://www.ebay.de/itm/114847244201 " 35 euro


Look on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ocessing_units and find a card on eBay that is newer than Terascale 2 for best performance, preferably GCN3 or newer for least complicated Linux support. Overlaps in model numbers make such a selection tricky. Choose as new as you can afford.

I read your post but didn't understand a single thing.. but after reading @obobskivich's post, i was forced to do some digging and reading.. and when i read back your post, i finally understood what you said..
You suggested me to purchase oland instead of terascale , since oland is the GPU that support GCN1.. I am confused here.

According to my reading:
Terascale GPU chip microarchitectures developed by ATI (older )
Oland GPU uses GCN1.0 architecture and instruction set.
Why there is a GPU call GCN then?? I
Is GCN is just an architecture or it is a gpu chip itself??

I am not sure about this, but i suppose:
GCN is a newer architecture and instruction (just as terascale instruction set is ATI developed ).
hence GPU chip that uses GCN instructionset are Oland chip. And there is GCN1.0 ...GCN 4.0 ...

And from the photo above, Oland chip are used in Radeon display card.. (although i have no idea what is Oland pro - don't tell me it is a higher modded chip of oland gpu ??)


I don't know what i was bluffing are correct or not.. maybe i am just uttering non sense.. pls correct me if i am wrong.. I have spent time to understand all these... just to buy a video card ) crazy. lol

Thx

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Shopping for a graphics card, though there is a dearth of different GPU makers, is a marketer's maze. My suggestion of a GCN3-based or newer-based card for best support and performance stands. If that's above your price point, then at least get one GCN1 based, and if that's a too high price, you can expect to get a lesser performance and support level. Oland is simply one of several classes of GCN1 GPUs.

FWIW, Dell's ATI options for the 755 probably included only Terascale cards, most likely HD 3xxx series. For my SFF Optiplex 760, the option originally installed was a low profile HD 3450.

Sorry was just trying to provide some more information generically (and I'm taking a shot in the dark just based on the presence of ICH9 - its a companion chip to a variety of MCHs (e.g. X38) which will correlate to the LGA 775 socket/platform) - you'd probably need to open the system up or use a utility like inxi to get more specifics on the hardware present. You can use inxi to do that, with the following command:


I understand the reasoning, but you're coming at it backwards - older GPUs will have less functionality in terms of 3D performance, and video decode, compute, etc - I'm not saying run out and buy the latest and greatest, but getting something 'relatively newer' is actually probably more ideal, all things considered (hence my suggestions).


Yes it is an interface/protocol for SSDs - my whole point in bringing that up was to say that PCIe generations will 'matter' more there, because the limited performance will directly impact disk performance, whereas (per the article I linked) the impact on GPU performance is much less severe. For example if you run an NVMe drive in PCIe Gen 2.0, you are limited to around 1GB/s (at least IME), but there are NVMe drives that can do multiple times that - as long as the system has a higher-generation PCIe bus. Again, this doesn't matter so much for a GPU, but can matter elsewhere - just food for thought on 'is old PCIe still usable' because the answer is 'it depends.'

Don't get hung up on the marketing numbers of 'nm' - it's all made up at this point (and has no impact on compatibility). Yes both of the suggestions are older hardware, but both should still be perfectly serviceable for basic use (the only real 'limit' would be for gaming or GPU compute). The big difference is that GCN will support Vulkan, while Terascale will not.


As mrmazda said - its a marketing game. The V4900 is a specific model #, Oland has a variety of names (as in what it was sold at retail as), so you gotta wind through all of them - prices may vary based on what it is branded as (yes this gets arbitrary and obnoxious).

WHAT? That can't possibly be right - I have no idea what your region/area is (and that will impact availability, prices, etc) but those are regularly a few dollars (US) on ebay, hence the suggestion (the 'Radeon' branded variant is usually a bit harder to come by).




The annoying answer is "it depends." Very generally:
- Terascale 2 and higher ATi/AMD (they are the same company) cards generally can support 3 or more monitors depending on output configuration - some of the fancier models can support 6 monitors. In V4900's case, it can do 3 monitors. Usually you're limited to 4 physical outputs, and to get the 'extra 2' you need an MST hub (which can be pricey) attached to one of the DisplayPort outputs, but there are some boards that have 5 or 6 physical outputs.
- Most newer Intel IGPs can support 3 outputs on paper, but most systems usually only have physical connections for 1 or 2.
- nVidia cards are limited to 4 outputs maximum (Kepler or higher), and 2 outputs maximum (Fermi or lower) regardless of how many physical connections the card offers.
- Terascale 1 and lower ATi/AMD are limited to 2 outputs maximum regardless of how many physical connections the card offers.

In practice this requires a lot of nuance because you can have boards like Radeon HD 4890 with 4 physical connectors, and it can use any two simultaneously, but then boards like Radeon HD 6970 with 5 physical connectors, which may be able to use all five simultaneously depending on exactly how you connect them (e.g. all DP or active DP adapters will work, all passive DP+ will not).




I thought it would be easy to find some 'guide' that explored this, but couldn't find anything. A 'full height' card uses the entire standard expansion slot length/height, while a 'half height' (or 'low profile') card does not. I cannot tell you based on measurements of your overall tower what your case supports. Look at pictures and make a judgment:
This is a random full height/full length card:
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-spec...n-hd-5870.c253
This is a random half height/low-profile card:
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-spec...ce-gt-610.c821

Notice how the actual PCB on the 'low profile' card does not use the entirety of the bracket? The bracket can be removed and made 'shorter' (they usually include an alterate one in the package, at least new retail cards). Many Dell/HP/etc low/mid-range systems require 'low profile' cards while standard ATX towers can generally take either.


PCI is a separate interface from PCIe - they are simply PCI v2.3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periph...onnect#History).

I would take the GCN over the Terascale just due to being newer and having Vulkan support.

GCN3 and beyond will be very hard to 'fill' for a low-end or basic card (GCN3 itself will be impossible to do so actually, because it only encompasses a handful of flagship SKUs like Radeon Fury and Radeon R9 285), hence the GCN1 suggestion (only GCN1 and GCN4 actually got low-to-entry-level parts - GCN2, 3, and 5 are exclusively 'high end' parts (at least as add-in cards go)).*

* What do I mean by 'high end' - I mean high performance cards targeted at gaming or professional workloads, that often require significant power and cooling to function; many of the better SKUs here will require 250W+ to run, and will have obscene prices today due to the GPU shortage. The 'lower end' parts will have the same (or very similar) video output capabilities, and should be able to be had much cheaper.

All GCN are supported under the amdgpu drivers, which support Vulkan, but GCN1/2 can alternatively support the older radeon driver, which does not support Vulkan. If Vulkan does not matter for you, either driver/hardware is fine (both support Wayland and Xorg well, and cards from Terascale and GCN are both capable of things like h264 decoding, multi-monitor, have good OpenGL support, etc). For GCN1/2 to use amdgpu you will have to blacklist radeon, which is a trivial consideration (e.g. discussion on Ubuntu with GRUB: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1306...deon-to-amdgpu). According to [I forget where I first read this] the whole reason GCN1/2 support was marked 'experimental' for so long was that suspend/power management hadn't been fully worked out, but someone fixed that relatively recently (but the 'rule of thumb' has yet to catch up to that fact).
GCN is AMD's name for an over-arching set of GPU architectures (and nobody has ever accused AMD/ATI graphics card nomenclature of making good sense (and if you think the Radeon world is bad, try to make sense of their professional cards!)) - Wikipedia has an article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Core_Next

In AMD's nomenclature, they have an over-arching 'architectural' name (e.g. Terascale, GCN, RDNA), a sub-name (e.g. GCN 2), and then a specific chip name (e.g. Hawaii) which will line up with a handful of retail SKUs (e.g. Radeon R9 290X). On linux the GCN/Terascale line matters because of where the drivers fall - Terascale (and anything older) uses the 'radeon' driver, while GCN (and newer) uses 'amdgpu' and that has implications for API support (e.g. Vulkan and OpenCL). There's also some differences in how utilities designed to give more 'control' over a graphics card can interact with the devices - for example CoreCtrl has far less options for GPUs running under 'radeon' than GPUs running under 'amdgpu.' If you're just after hooking up some monitors, this is probably more academic than not, but I'd still suggest a GCN-based card if you can find a cheap one (along the reasoning of 'better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it'), but I wouldn't go out of my way to have latest-and-greatest just for basic desktop use.

Some GPU code names will get suffixes to line-up with how they're eventually marketed, which usually just refers to being slightly faster/slower, for example 'Cayman' has 'Cayman XT,' 'Cayman LE,' etc but they're all functionally the same (in terms of compatibility), just differ in performance (and they line up to different retail SKUs like HD 6970, HD 6930, etc which is done for price segmentation).

Clear as mud, isn't it?

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That's seriously overpriced compared to US ebay prices in the less than $30US range.

All Dell Optiplex towers use full height expansion cards.

Hmm mine came without any graphic card.. only the onboard one.