Newbie Question-Funky Motherboard

[Mk.]

I seem to have gotten a strange motherboard in my Dimension 3000 that was ordered factory standard, straight from Dell. The support people have no clue what I'm talking about. Anyways, I'm wondering about the expansion slots...I read elsewhere that the standard motherboard did not come with any AGP slots...I have a old nVidia Geforce FX 5500 AGP card plugged in right now, and all the other slots are the same thing! I somehow doubt I just crammed it in hard enough to make it work. (Yes, it's the AGP one, not PCI) Also, it came with dual 3.0 ghz Pentium IVs if that means anything. Another thing I've heard, although from a much less reliable source, is that XP Home cannot support multiple processors. Odd. So, any info on what's going on would be appreciated

My Comp

Different Angle

Close-up of Slot

Thanks in advance!

 

[kitty500cat]

Um...that's PCI

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

Your video card is obviously the pci model of the nVidia Geforce FX 5500. If you do a Google search for nVidia Geforce FX 5500 pci, you`ll see what I mean.

Your pics only show pci slots and not agp slots.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:

 

[Mk.]

Ummm...funky card then I guess...just took this

Gotta hate glare...

 

[howard_hopkinso]

That definitely does say AGP. Can you show us a pic of the cards connectors?

Regards Howard

 

[tifc8lraz]

Looks like nVidia messed up on their part . You most likely don't have dual core, but hyper-threading, which is the cpu running on 2 threads instead of 1. The computer usually thinks it's a dual-core by writing "2 cpu". There were a few dual-core P4's made, and I don't think that Dell used any.

*EDIT*
Windows XP Home Edition does support dual-core processors given that the proper drivers are installed. You may not get as much performance out of them if they are 64-Bit and you are running a 32-Bit Windows OS, but that's completely different.

 

[Mk.]

The connectors are straight up and down...I don't feel like pulling my computer back out from its poorly vented cubbyhole But, I'm not sure about the double-threading thing...most of the games I play that have bugs associated with dual cores...well, I get them. Also, DxDiag reports two processors and the task manager performance tab does as well. Any real way to tell?

 

[howard_hopkinso]

The connectors are straight up and down.

Then, that is definitely a pci card. There is no way you could get an AGP card in a pci slot and get it to work.

Regards Howard

 

[tifc8lraz]

Also, DxDiag reports two processors and the task manager performance tab does as well. Any real way to tell?

Yes, that's the issue with hyper-threading; it reports 2 cpu's in Windows. Download CPU-Z (open cpu-z.exe) and get the Processor Model, and we can tell.

Then, that is definitely a pci card. There is no way you could get an AGP card in a pci slot and get it to work.

Well, you could, but I think the smoke and fire would kind of be in the way .

 

[kitty500cat]

I had that on the one computer where I work. I was trying to figure out whether it was actually a dual-processor system. CPU-Z reported the ALU as a separate processor. I think that one was a 3GHz FSB800 HyperThreading processor.