New Graphics Card

[jtibbles79]

Hi all,

Have been thinking about buying a new graphics cards but I'm easily confused. Can anyone help me?

1. Difference between AGP and PCI?
2. Any recommendations? Can't really afford too much at the moment (Christmas banking hangover!)

I've currently got a really old card I bought about five years ago (Hercules 3D Prophet 4500, I think)

If it's any use my PC specs are here:
http://www.pcservicecall.co.uk/layo...f80}&ID={e7e660a8-3ced-4e58-871b-5f2991c29fba}
Although I have 712RAM not 256.

Thanks in advance,
J

 

[ChristopherP]

If your computer is more than 4 years old i'd say that the rest of it can't be that good, and you have to ask yourself if it is really worth putting a new graphics card in!

The link to your specs does not work.

AGP and PCI & PCI-e (dont get the last two mixed up!!) are the different interface things used - and they use different slots on the motherboard. PCI-e (e meaning express) being the most recent... so not going to be supported by your PC.

What processor and motherboard do you have?

Cheers

Chris

p.s. welcome here

 

[crazylegs]

Hi and welcome jtibbles....


Yes your link isn't working.....

And what Chris says is basically Gospel, it wouldn't really be worth upgrading your Graphics card because the rest of the system is so out of date...

I'm Guessing its something like an Athlon 1500 or something along those lines...

 

[jtibbles79]

My apologies for my un-clarity.


I bought the PC a few months ago, but it only had an on-board graphics thingy, this sucked up all my 256MB of RAM so I bought more RAM and chucked an old 64MB graphics card in there.

My specs are:
CPU Intel® Celeron® D processor 341 (2.93Ghz) Motherboard Santiago (P5S800-VM) Memory 712 MB DDR RAM - PC3200Hard Drive 160GB UDMA 7200rpm CD / DVD Drive Lite-On® SOHW-1633S DVD-RW Floppy Drive Not installed Video / Graphics Card SiS 661FX (although currently using Hercules 4500) Sound Card Realtek ALC655 audio system

Hope this helps.

j

 

[chelseafc2005]

ok the board supports agp graphics cards. I would reccomend upgrading the motherboard to something with pci-e support on it because agp is slowly on its way out and a pci-e board will support all of the newest graphics cards.

 

[jtibbles79]

That might be something quite easy for you technological knowledgable people but I'll have trouble installing a new graphics card, let alone a new mother board. I know that it supports AGP and it also has PCI x8 slots (whatever that means) I always thought that AGP was a dedicated graphics card interface thing. But then I'm not too bright with things like this as you can probably tell!

 

[tomsega]

Yeah, if you have an old system the old components will bottleneck a new graphics card, and you won't be able to support PCI-e graphics cards, which are very new and expensive on the whole, but the only upgrade path.

If you just want to spend under £150 to play games on your PC that look better than Playstation 2 graphics the best card is probably the 256mb 6600gt, which is cheap at around £100 . The best bang for buck card, however, is most probably the AGP 6800GS - which is about £180 and the best card available for AGP boards, so will give you very decent graphics (partly depending on the rest of your system).

Those would be your 'quick fix' options, if you just want to play a few games and not fiddle about.
However, if I were you, I would do the following-

Sell your old PC, and put that money towards this-
http://www.1megashop.net/1ms-computers/64-bare-3200-939.htm

It is an Athlon64 3200+ barebones system- comprising of just a processor, case, and motherboard, for £215. The motherboard is socket 939, so will support the fastest processors available if you wanted to upgrade in the future. It is also the only board that supports both PCI-E and AGP at the same time, so it will give you more freedom in buying graphics cards.

Get 1GB of value PC3200 RAM for about £60
Get a 7K rpm hard disk, like the Seagate Barricudar 7, for about £60.
Get a DVD/CD-R (DVD-R's are a luxury on a budget) for about £25
THEN get your graphics card, and aim to spend at least £90

All in all, it'll cost about £450. However, that new HDD won't include windows Xp on it, so bare that in mind..

EDIT: If you don't know what you're doing, there are plenty of decent tutorials on the internet. You could always get a new system from the likes of PCworld, its just it'll probably cost you £699 instead of £450 for a similar spec.

 

[Me__2001]

the motherboard you have is pretty up to date for an AGP board and the system spec isn't that bad, if you want to give it some more oomph then upgrade the CPU to a 3Ghz P4, should cost you about £120

now for the graphics a 6600GT would be a good upgrade at about £100

That might be something quite easy for you technological knowledgable people but I'll have trouble installing a new graphics card, let alone a new mother board. I know that it supports AGP and it also has PCI x8 slots (whatever that means) I always thought that AGP was a dedicated graphics card interface thing

your're right in thinking AGP is dedicated to graphics, its pretty much a highspeed PCI slot. a PCI slot is used for just about every expansion card you can buy, including graphics cards but they are slower than AGP ones

 

[jtibbles79]

If AGP is dedicated to graphics and faster than PCI; why then is AGP on the 'way out'? Does this make sense in some way I don't understand?


I'm not really worried about having a cutting-edge system, I've just begun to notice that some of the games I'm playing are struggling in with graphics.

Thanks for all your advice guys, it's been much appreciated.

j

 

[Me__2001]

AGP is on the way out because some bright spark came up with PCI-E (PCI-express), which is even faster than AGP hence AGP is no longer the thing to have and is slowly being phased out

what games do you play ? if you get a 6600GT yo can play just about any game on its default settings, obviously you won't be able to go crazy with the quality or resolution but it will still be a huge improvement over your current card