Video Card Selection

Hi, I made a thread about this a while ago. I'm shopping for a new video card and can't decide which one. First off, how can I tell what is compatable with my computer? I ran an AIDA32 test in my last thread but I had some people telling me that I had PCI only and others said I had AGP x4. Can you find a good video card that will fit my computer (I'm not sure which tests to run though) which has a farely reasonable pricetag?

 

http://forum.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=76416
My AIDA report is in there.

http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d865gvhz/index.htm
That's the motherboard that I have.

And the attachment is my EVEREST Home Edition report. Sorry for double posting, I couldn't find the Edit button.

 

Your Mother Board has an Integrated AGP Video card. The only option you have to change your Video Card is to downgrade to PCI, according to the picture of your MB.

This MB is a Micro-ATX form factor and doesn't allow for too much in the way of an upgrade. If your mind is set to upgrade the video and if your case has the room, I would suggest upgradeing the MB and the Video Card.

 

How would I go about upgrading the MB? How much would it cost too? And if I upgraded the MB, I wouldn't lose any data right?

 

You would first need to look inside your case to see if it will take a larger board. Assuming you have a tower case that means the current board is about 3-5 inches short of touchoing the bottom of the case. You can check here for MB prices.
http://www.nanosys1.com/
There are many other places too but this is the place I buy from because they are local for me and the quality of what they sell is pretty good.

As far as losing data, You may or may not have to reinstall windows. When you change MB's you are changing a lot of hardware and and it really ticks windows off. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. Just make sure you do a good backup bfore you start.

 

Hmm, I doubt I could replace the Mb then. I have no knowledge of how to do it and I'm afraid that I would screw something up. Could you name any good cards that would work with my computer right now? Just something good enough to run games like Halo.

I don't have too much money either so pricewise the MB switch isn't a good choice.

 

I'm not a gamer so I wouldn't know what the specs would be for that game. PCI would be your only option and that would be a downgrade from the onboard video. The board you have, I think, has an option in the BIOS to adjust the amount of Video RAM. Understand tho that this takes away from the regular RAM in your computer.

Understand also that PCI and PCI-E are very different. Your board will only allow a PCI. NOT PCI_E. Also called PCI Express.

 

Hmm, so that means that my choices are very limited to pick from. This and this have caught my attention. Which of those two would be the best? Is there any better PCI cards?

 

Sorry man, I can't make a recommendation to go from AGP to PCI. Watch the thread for a couple of days and maybe someone else will have some better ideas.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814103167

This Radeon 9250 is $25 cheaper.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133134

And this FX5500 is $16 cheaper.

Neither of them will play Halo at a very high resolution, but they will probably do OK at 1024x768.

 

The 9250 that you showed doesn't have any difference in performance right? I'll probably go with that one because it's cheaper but I'm just checking to make sure that it's not going to be different from the one I posted.

 

Most of the time there is little to no performance difference between brands. Nothing noticeable at least...

 

Ok, it looks like that is what I'll be purchasing then . I'll just have to see how installation goes once I buy it.