Will a regular PCI Express card work in a "PCI Express x16 Graphics (PEG)" slot?

"January 7th 2014 Edit

I currently have a PCIE x4 Intel I350 NIC in a PCIE x16 slot meant for graphics on a Intel DH77DF motherboard working without a problem.

The original post below stating that ""as long as it fits it should work"" still stands. It's still possible that some motherboard manufacturers have a PCIE x16 slot that won't accept anything other than a graphics card. I think this only happened in the early days of PCI Express, and modern motherboards (say Core 2 and newer, and definitely Core i-series and newer) are pretty flexible in what you can use the PCIE x16 slot for.

Also, make sure you have on-board or on-chip graphics, or a video card somewhere. Most motherboards won't boot without video. Although, sometimes you might be able to configure the BIOS to ignore the lack of video and continue booting.

I figured I'd return to clarify my answer after encountering this very situation myself :)

Original Post

Initially I'd say there's no real difference between the PCI-Express slots and as long as it fits there's no problem.

However, the problem is if the PCI-Express slot is specifically labeled for video card. The tomshardware link shows the user placing the TV Tuner card in his second slot, not the first. The first slot (in your case, your only slot) might be graphics only.

Some point to yes. Some point to no. It's hard to tell and seems like it's up to how the motherboard manufacturers decided to integrate the chipsets."

"I have done this many times without a problem.

The PCI Express graphics slot (PEG) is identical to a normal PCI Express slot, with the exception that it has some architectural enhancements for transferring large amounts of data to and from your system and sometimes providing more power to the card. This doesn't negatively impact using any standard PCI Express card in that slot.

The hiccup, is if the motherboard also has an integrated graphics chip. If it does, a few motherboards automatically disable the integrated graphics chip, depending on if the BIOS detects a card in the PEG slot. This is not typical though, and you can usually adjust this behaviour by going into the BIOS and changing the priority of video card detection to prioritize integrated graphics first instead of PCI Express or PCI."