PCI-E question.

so after doing some research i figured out that my 630i nvidia mobo has one pci-e 16 slot. my question is after looking on newegg, im guessing i have to go with the cards that say pcie x 16 right? otherwise id be getting more power then i can actually use?

mostly nowadays all grapich cards are PCI-E compatible. You only need to avoid grapich cards that only fit into AGP slot. You can put any PCI-E grapich card on your slot.

If the grapich card requires more power than the PCI-E can give, they usually have one or two slots where you can put a cable from your PSU if it has PCI-E headed cables.

An example of a grapich card that requires more power:

Spoiler:

That also means your PSU should be also a bit more powerful than a regular 350W.

FYI the 16x refers to the bandwidth between the card and the motherboard. Also about the Power Supply, 450W plus is recommended.

All cards are backwards compatible with older PCI express standards so you don't have to worry about whether the card will work. Same with the actual slots being backwards compatible with older PCIe cards. This means that you don't have to worry about whether a card will work or not because as long as it fits, it will work. Older and newer cards all use the x16 slot as well so you don't have to worry about that.

One thing that might be something to note is what revision of PCI express your motherboard has (your chipset is only capable of 1.0 according to the Wikipedia link). For example, PCIe 2.0's data throughput is twice as fast as PCIe 1.0's. This doesn't necessarily mean that if you put a 2.0 card in a 1.0 slot that it will only work half as fast. The card itself may not be using all 16 data lanes at max capacity all the time due to the processing the card has to do to the data. In the end it all comes down to whether or not the card can keep up. I have a GTX 260 (2.0 card) in a nforce4 (1.0) board and I can tell you that its definitely not being limited by the bandwidth available as it still runs hot as hell. Really the only thing 2.0 has up on 1.0 is that because it is twice as fast that it can shut down lanes in order to conserve power.

Also, like Arbitor and Masterwolf said, you may need a more powerful power supply as well as the extra hookups to the card in order to run it. If you already have the hookups for it (or if the card provides 4-pin molex converters) then I would go ahead and try it and see if it works. If after installing drivers you notice it is reporting that it has to run in a low power mode or if you notice the computer isn't stable then thats when you should get a more powerful power supply to run it. For figuring out how much power you will need use this calculator to find out: http://www.antec.outervision.com/

So in closing, I wouldn't let whether a card is 2.0 or 1.0 sway your decision. Let your pocket book and the latest graphics card hierarchy chart as well as the latest Best Graphics Cards for the Money review decide.

More info on PCI Express here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci_express_2.0