trying to find what kinda video card i have

ok im NOT a computer guy at at all, so be gental on all the computer lingo, anyhow i have a hp pavilion 533w, bought it a couple years back, want to upgrade my video card cause thats what everyone keeps tellin me to do to play my games i want to play, well in trying to upgrade, and find out what kind i have, i have run into huge snag.
there are alot of DIFFERENT video cards out there, and i have no clue what i need, any info on where i might to to look to see what i have, and what i should get would be most appreciated

 

Let me see what I can do,,

There are two kinds sound adapters for computers,,
(1)- on board- this is built in the speaker jacks would be in a vertical row below the keyboard/mouse inputs& printer ports

(2)- sound card- this would be in a horizontal row towards the bottom on the back. You may have a modem or network card in theses horizontal rows
Report back if this helps & we'll go from there

Welcome to MG

 

yeah i know i have a psi video card, but there are diffrent kinds of psi arent there?

 

I think you mean PCI, yeah there is PCI and AGP
but thats for video, (AGP means Advavced Graphic Port) I think

But wheres your sound coming from?

Anyway, if you have on board sound you will still need a sound card and that will go below your video card

 

lol thats what im trying to find out, video card, not sound )

 

i have been lookin at pics of motherboards, and video cards, but the pci express videos cards look nothin like my motherboard, spot,, and the pci ones, dont really look like it, like they got and extra lil tab on em

 

ooooppps my bad

Well then you just need to shop for a vid card

Do you have your owners manual, it will tell you if you have a AGP port

 

no i must threw it away i cant find the damn thing, i know i have pci, but seems like there is dif kinds, i know its not an express, is there more then just express pci and just pci

 

if you dont have your manual go here-

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/setupCategory?dlc=en&lc=en&product=90862&lang=en&cc=us&

 

omg i been lookin for something like that all nite *sigh* thx a bunc

 

greetings! hope I can help you out...

your pc is one generation newer than mine... I have an HP Pavilion 513n and I think our systems are nearly identical. I've recently upgraded my graphics card twice in the past six months.

I'm pretty sure that your pc doesn't have an available AGP slot, so you're going to have to go with a PCI card. basically, you want a card that runs on DDR SDRAM, as this is the type of memory your system has.

my first upgrade was to a Nvidia GeForce4 MX420 64MB card. I was pretty happy with it until I ran on to a number of games that don't support MX cards AT ALL! why this is, I have no idea... but anyway

I recently found a good deal on an ATI Radeon 9250 128MB and I've been VERY satisfied with it so far. the difference is quite noticeable. so my recommendation is for the Radeon card. depending on what you want to spend, I would try to go with at least 128MB, but if this is over you budget, 64MB is a great improvement over the onboard graphics your system currently has.

also, I bumped up my RAM to 512MB and it helped a lot too. I would assume that you're currently running 256MB, so you may want to upgrade your RAM as well. just a suggestion.

hope this helps you out. if you have any other specific questions, you can email me at jaygee_61@yahoo.com and I can help guide you through the upgrade.