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Video Card - Help

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Lazlo

Lazlo

Good people drink good beer. ~ HST
Looks like it's time to upgrade my video card since the new EA games aren't supporting it any more.

I've figured out, I have a NVidia geforce 2 MX card.

Seems easy enough to install.

Anything I should know or look out for?

I saw something on Newwegg about making sure my motherboard will except the card. PCI, AGP, and PCI Express. How can I tell which one of these I use?

And can anyone recommend what kind of card I need or should get. I just play sports games like Madden and NHL.

Basically just any advice you could throw my way would be appreciated. :)

Thanks in advance.
 
OK -where to start ...

Do I have PCI or (insert form factor here) slots?

Option 1 - get out the manual for the PC - see if it has a layour for the Motherboard. All available slots will be labeled.

Option 2 - Oops the dog ate my PC manual ... Switch of power, open case. If all the slots for cards going to the back are in line one with another then all you have is PCI. Your choices are limited.

Option 3 - Oops the dog ate my PC manual -- get the MB diagram or specs of the computer manufacturer web-site. It'll tell you what slots you have and how many.

Now onto the card itself.
If you want to stick with nVidia (not a bad choice) and you are limited to PCI then there is good news and bad news.

Good news .. Prices will be low.
Bad news .. choices will be smaller than PCI Express.

I'd focus on going higher in RAM on card than the minimum / suggested by EA games.
I'd go higher in video performance than the recommended minimum by EA games.
And if it is a PCI card you are replacing you can get great performance for well under $100 (possibly as low as 50 for PCI OR PCI Express).
 
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Yeah they still make alot of PCI cards. Course the chances of him having a pci vid card are very rare, but you're right, there is always a chance. Even if so, he should definitely have an AGP slot on the board. Unless the machine is like 8 years or older.
 
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I don't want to echo what everyone else is saying, but if your computer is less than 6 years old then I'm sure it has AGP.

I am somewhat ATI biased, and my 9600 Pro is great for what i need and not too expensive, but is almost two years old.
 
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Wow. thanks a lot for your help. I found my computer on the manufacturers website.

It looks like I have both pci and agp with 4 pci available? NewEgg is great I just got some memory from them and it arrived in 2 days:yow1:.

I was looking at video cards there and they have options in their search for AGP 2X/4X, AGP 4X/8X, and AGP pro 4X/8X. Do I have to get a certain one of these or is it a quality issue that I can decide on? What are important features? Like vivo, pixelpipelines, openGL?

Brutus does this look good? link

Again thanks a ton for your guys' input.
 
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