What actually uses PCI ports????

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

I know that PCI-E ports are used for GPU's, expansion cards, wifi cards etc.

 

But what the heck uses PCI slots?? 
Never seen a wifi card that can use it for example, yet they still exist?? - Am I missing something?

 

[tkitch]

on most modern hardware PCI Slots don't exist.  Long since depracated.  

The fact that the board has "DDR 2" silkscreened onto it says that's at least a 10 year old board, if not more.

 

But back in the day:

Network Cards, Sound Cards, GPUs, and EVERYTHING hooked up to PCI. 

[Fasauceome]

4 minutes ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

yet they still exist??

Yeah, modern devices won't evaporate the obsolete technology from existence. You'll still see plenty of older devices with PCI, as well as speciality products designed for backwards compatibility.

 

PCI devices were everything when PCIe hadn't been invented yet. In fact, motherboards came with a lot less feathers, even sound cards over PCI were a must at one point.

[Donut417]

8 minutes ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

ut what the heck uses PCI slots?? 

PCI slots were for expansion cards back in the day. AGP was specifically used for GPU's. So all other expansion cards would use PCI. PCI and AGP both are dead at this point as PCI E took over the role for both of them. 

 

 

[rcmaehl]

23 minutes ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

But what the heck uses PCI slots?? 
Never seen a wifi card that can use it for example, yet they still exist?? - Am I missing something?

Wifi Cards haven't used PCI slots in years due to the max bandwidth shared between all slots being 533Mb/s which easily can get overwhelmed with an 802.11n card (aka Wifi 4) at 300Mbps and far surpassed by an 802.11 ac card (aka Wifi 4) which had 1300 Mbps. Same with USB. USB 2 hasn't used it since it limited the number of ports and USB 3 far surpasses it in the amount of bandwidth even a single USB3 device uses.

 

That being said PCI slots haven't been on boards for years.

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

It's because my motherboard at home uses this, and I was wondering if I could use a WIFI card in that slot. But I can see that it's likely a NO.

[jaslion]

2 hours ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

It's because my motherboard at home uses this, and I was wondering if I could use a WIFI card in that slot. But I can see that it's likely a NO.

You totally can. Basically see anything that exists for pci-e exists in an older form for pci. Do keep in mind that pci is limited to 133Mb/s so you are much better off using a pcie port for a wifi card or even usb 2.0 or better port for a wifi stick

[tkitch]

2 hours ago, jaslion said:

You totally can. Basically see anything that exists for pci-e exists in an older form for pci. Do keep in mind that pci is limited to 133Mb/s so you are much better off using a pcie port for a wifi card or even usb 2.0 or better port for a wifi stick

Close:
PCI is 133 MBps (or roughly 1Gbps).  So for WIFI it's pretty much fine.  

[tkitch]

5 hours ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

It's because my motherboard at home uses this, and I was wondering if I could use a WIFI card in that slot. But I can see that it's likely a NO.

You absolutely can put a WiFi card there.  If any still exist.

 

PCI hasn't been a regularly supported interface for a number of years, so you'll have a hard time finding something to use it.

 

Here's a couple I found, but they're very old tech:
https://www.amazon.com/Linksys-Wireless-N-Adapter-Dual-Band-WMP600N/dp/B0028N6VN2

https://www.amazon.com/Desktop-Adapter-Wireless-Antennas-Computer/dp/B09B3XW9SB

 

And I make 0 promises about them actually having full modern OS support.  (Also they're Wireless N, IDK if you'll find newer chips on PCI.)

 

[jaslion]

14 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Close:
PCI is 133 MBps (or roughly 1Gbps).  So for WIFI it's pretty much fine.  

True keep forgetting its MB not Mb