thanks for your replies bjalbert and maardein - i did have a look at the mobo now and sadly there is no PCIe slot available, although it should be as per http://www.pc-specs.com/mobo/Intel/D945GCPE/1506
on the plus side, i did learnt a LOT about graphics cards and system specs - i`m now working on building a decent mining rig which can double up as a gaming machine once the GPU mining phase is over
in order to help out others in a similar situation , here are my findings :
1. get your PCI versions in place mainly to know the difference between PCIe and plain-old PCI.
2. for windows xp users it IS possible to run cgminer , i got it up and running on an old onboard graphics chipset of mine. You`ll need to install Catalyst Control Center 11.12 and APP SDK of 2.6 - visit oldapps.com to download the installables. The matching cgminer version is 3.4.3 but this may give lower hashrates
If possible upgrade to Win7 to avoid the hassles of using old drivers and lower hashrates
3. Get the basic building blocks right - invest in a good quality PSU and also UPS to avoid burning out your cards ! 32-bit or 64-bit does not seem to matter but having larger system RAM never hurts
on the plus side, i did learnt a LOT about graphics cards and system specs - i`m now working on building a decent mining rig which can double up as a gaming machine once the GPU mining phase is over
in order to help out others in a similar situation , here are my findings :
1. get your PCI versions in place mainly to know the difference between PCIe and plain-old PCI.
2. for windows xp users it IS possible to run cgminer , i got it up and running on an old onboard graphics chipset of mine. You`ll need to install Catalyst Control Center 11.12 and APP SDK of 2.6 - visit oldapps.com to download the installables. The matching cgminer version is 3.4.3 but this may give lower hashrates
If possible upgrade to Win7 to avoid the hassles of using old drivers and lower hashrates
3. Get the basic building blocks right - invest in a good quality PSU and also UPS to avoid burning out your cards ! 32-bit or 64-bit does not seem to matter but having larger system RAM never hurts