What video card will my computer support?

Ok I got a new computer and its great for games but I still want to keep my old one and use it for something. I want to use it for light games like hl2 games. Right now it runs these games slowly. I want to get a new video card that supports DirectX 9 and widescreen. Heres the mother board model and specs.
Asus A7N8X-LA specs:http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c00006476#N1439 I'm going to upgrade to 1GB of RAM cause thats all it can hold. Also the current video card is: NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX Integrated GPU. How do I know what card I can buy? Thanks

 

The most cost effective card is the NVIDIA GE FORCE 7300 GT. This comes with it's own driver set. DO NOT download the "190.62" update from NVIDIA as it mucks with the refresh (Each time I test it, my screen refreshes about 5 times). Strangely enough, the offered update from Microsoft appears to improve gaming. However, "improve" may be down to the rest of my hardware set-up.

Remember, no 2 systems in the world are the same.

Regs,

S.

 

my computer doesn't have PCI-E

 

How many watts is your power supply? Open your case and take a look at the sticker on your PSU. If you PSU can handle it I would look into a 7600 GS AGP Version. Also how much is your budget?

 

Have to agree with plover what is your PSU to make sure it can handle the card. Another important consideration is baseline temps of your CPU, system, etc. Adding a Video Card can and will increase overall system temps and have a direct impact on CPU, in some cases forcing it to shutdown from overheating.

Use EVEREST Free Edition 2.20 and goto Computer>>>Sensors and note what your current temps are. No point adding a Video Card and then later finding you don't have good thermal management.

If all looks good here are some of the better AGP cards:

SAPPHIRE 100258L Radeon HD 3650 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X

SAPPHIRE 100228L Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X

Both are very reasonably priced and have DX10 so can do Vista if you want at a later date.

 

Basically the mobo should be able to support any AGP video card as long as the PSU can handle it and you have reasonable cooling.

Of interest you can often get AGP video cards for $5-10 more and yet they are 2-3 models later, will run absolute circles around the earlier models and offer better cooling solutions. Recently my Neighbour wanted to upgrade to an AGP video card and he was looking at a ATI 9550 for about $75AUD. I told him to hold off so I could do some research and for $82AUD we got him a ATI 3650 which is arguably 3 times faster than the 9550 for $7 more.

Here are some summary charts on ATI and nVidia cards so you can see the differences between the models. Often you will only have to pay $10-20 more for something that is far superior and worth the outlay:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/132

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/131

Hope this helps with the decisions.

 

I second the HD3850 - I have the both AGP and PCI-E versions of the card. Both have performed quite well in their respective PC's. I can say the AGP version was a very nice upgrade for my aging ASUS board - my 3DMark 2003 stats went up dramatically. Plays WoW and other graphic intensive games at high hardware settings.

I had a problem installing it at first using the newest drivers . . . but was able to install it fine using the driver CD that came with the card. Turned out there was a patch for the problem (some sort of AGP issue) on the AMD site that allowed me to update the driver. Also, some feed-back I have received indicates that some chipsets and or motherboards have a problem with the card, but these issues were cleared up in most cases by updating the chipset drivers. VIA chipsets came up more then others. My ASUS board has an intel chipset.


Good card, and very overclockable as well.