I'm looking to buy a new graphics card for my PC to replace my weedy GeForce GT 630 one. I understand that my motherboard requires a PCI-e x16 slot for modern cards, so I looked inside my desktop first. My PC uses a MSI B75MA-P45 motherboard with three PCI slots, labelled "PCI_E1" (currently used), "PCI_E2" and "PCI1". See the picture below.



Since none of these are labelled PCI-e x16, I thought I might need to buy a new motherboard first. But when I looked up the specs on my motherboard, every site says that it already has a PCI-e 3.0 x16 slot! This makes no sense to me because none of the slots are labelled as such, and PCI-e x1 (which I assume is the label for the first slot) is very different from PCI-e x16. So if I buy, for example, a GeForce GTX 970 card, will it actually be compatible with my motherboard?

 

The PCI-E x16 slot is the one your current video card is in, the small one below is the x1.

There should be no issues in replacing your video card with a modern one, although make sure that your PSU has a PCI-E power connector if your intended new card needs one. If not, you can get adaptors.

 

Huh! Thanks for the reply. It's really confusing that the slot is labelled "PCI_E1" because it sounds like something else. I blame the manufacturer.

 

Ya it can be confusing sometimes. But you're good to go! Like yak said, make sure you have enough power on your power supply to power the new card. Depending on what you get, anything over 500 watts should be fine for a single card.