Upgrade Adivce

First of all, I know virtually nothing about hardware...but i guess thats why i'm here. I'm planning on getting a new video card, but know very little about them. I've thought about the Radeon X1900 with 512MB, thinking it might last me a good while. But I have no idea whether this is compatible with my system. I have a Dell Dimension 4600...2.66GHz...all stock hardware except for a radeon 9550 video card (128mb), and 2.00GB of RAM instead of the RAM it came with. Any other system specs you need just ask as i have no idea. Now, I've heard of different ports utilized by ceartain cards, PCI and (AGP?), No idea what i have, i suspect PCI. The X1900 apperently is PCI Express, is this different than PCI? I ceartainly don't want to come home with an expensive piece of equipment that is completely useless with my machine. I've also heard about fans and power sources, is this something I would also need to upgrade in addition to a new video card? Am I all set to go ahead and buy a high end video card, or are there other components I need to upgrade as well? Is there a card better suited to my machine that I could buy instead?

Would greatly appreciate some clarification here.

-questionhead

 

Sorry about the double post, the first time it appeared not to have gone through.

 

There is a difference between PCI and PCI express.

The easiest thing to do is to go to http://www.crucial.com/ and hit the "scan my system" buttom. It will quickally scan your computer and suggest compatible RAM chips and graphics cards. You can buy them right from the site and their prices are pretty good.

There are probably better deals out there but Crucial is the easiest way to go..

 

you can use the crucial system scanner to find compatible parts but newegg.com is by far the best place to shop for computer parts.

 

Re: Upgrade Advice

I agree...like I said, crucial is convenient...but newegg.com does have a great variety of parts