Captain1328

Next stupid question-

How do I find out if the graphics card is ''onboard'' or not?

imported_Megatron

If the port on the PC for the monitor cable is directly connected to the mother board and the only way to remove it is to unsolder leads, then it's onboard. If it's connected to a card in an expansion slot (more than likely a PCI slot), then it's not onboard.

Lord Odin

Connections in the upper area are provided by the motherboard, the rest are from an AGP slot (if you have one) and PCI slots. I guess they could also be ISA or something if your computer is old enough

albc15

WOAH, how do you update an video card

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Thanks MileHighSalute for the sig/av

albc15

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...00/default.asp

is this a good or bad thing about my mx 400

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Thanks MileHighSalute for the sig/av

Lord Odin

Wasn't that like the "budget" nVidia card about 3 years ago?

I guess that's alright, if all the gaming you do is solitaire

For the price it ran back then, you could get something like an X600 or 6600 and see a good amount of improvement. However, I haven't really followed much on either of them, so I don't know if they provide enough bang for the buck. From my experience, get a Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9600 Pro. That's some awesome value for my "other" computer

Captain1328

Meg and Odin...thanks for the info and the pics...

Examination of my PC shows that it is indeed an onboard connection.

So now what kind of crap am I looking at to upgrade?

TonyMontana

Open your case, what your looking for is an AGP slot. Its easily found, most boards will have it just about the five PCI slots, it'll be the browm slot (on most boards its brown) thats to the left of the chipset (silver heatsink in this case).

This is the Accerlerated Graphics Port (AGP). Regardless of what spec slot u have, 2x/4x/8x whatever, if u want to upgrade your graphics card u better hope to god u have one.

Otherwise, if your mobo doesnt have the AGP slot, your going to be stuck with a PCI card, which is limited by the paltry 133Mb/s bandwidth of the bus. PCI video cards aren't very fast as a result.

If u have an AGP slot, u get the pick of the litter as far as video cards. I suggest u buy a GeForce 4 Ti card for around $70, thats the best deal you will find under $100.

With a PCI slot card, your choices are limited. I suggest you purchase a Radeon 9600 or 9100 PCI, unfortunately they're pretty hard to find. The ones I found were way overpriced.

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Lord Odin

You could go Tony's route, but I think this may give us more info to help out.

Go here:

http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=sandra.html

Download SiSoftware Sandra 2004 (Standard). Install it and fire it up.

First screen looks like:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v193/Lor...ero/sandra1.jpg

The icon for "PCI, AGP, CardBus Bus(es) Information" is what you want to click.

If you see this:



You're good to go. AGP Bus(es) 1 means you have an AGP slot for a graphics card. If it's 0, or not listed, then you'll need a PCI graphics card or upgrade the motherboard as well. That may also entail other upgrades (CPU and memory, depending on current setup and one you're migrating to).

In that instance, that you don't have AGP, it depends on what kind of games you may want to play in the future. If you're going to stick with Sims and things of the like, the PCI one may be fine, I really don't know either way though. However, if you're going to want to get into anything like Doom3, Far Cry, or Half Life 2, upgrading for that AGP slot would be the best route to go in terms of performance.

Let us know what you find out about that before we go too much farther though

TonyMontana

good work Odin, I didnt think of Sandra. and I use it all the time too

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