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New video card?

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  • 03-01-2008 6:23pm
    #1
    corblimey
    Registered Users Posts: 4,475 ✭✭✭


    I want to upgrade my PC (gonna get a new one next year, er later this year, so don't want to go mad) and thought a nice new video card would give it a new lease of life. But I'm totally confused by what my options are. PCI, PCi-e, AGP. Is it possible to look inside my PC and tell if I have a spare port for a particular type of card? Am I going to have trouble disabling the current one - how do i find out if it's "onboard" or whatever?

    My PC is a 2 year old HP Pavilion T680, and I've never even looked inside. The HP doc about updaing and upgrading only talks about memory and h/d. I have 1 gig of ram, that should cover most gaming requirements these days, right? If not, how do I go about figuring out what sort of ram I need?


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    #2
    Kintarō Hattori
    Registered Users Posts: 14,993 ✭✭✭✭Kintarō Hattori


    From what I can find out on the interweb that PC uses a Radeon 9200 which has an AGP connection. So go looking for a decent card like the 7600GT or one of the newer HD2600 cards. 1GB isn't really enough for modern games, you'll need a minimum of 2GB in reality. Again from what I can see it uses DDR400 memory which is still fairly cheap to pick up at the moment.


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    #3
    ricka05
    Registered Users Posts: 322 ✭✭ricka05


    http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00063272&lc=en&cc=br&dlc=en&product=427055&lang=en

    If I'm right its you PC motherboard layout.....And its has AGPx8 slot , witch limits your upgrading options.....
    best you could get would be http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-106-XF&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411 - XFX 7950gt....

    But I daubt it s wortyh investing 280euro in this mashine....


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    #4
    corblimey
    Registered Users Posts: 4,475 ✭✭✭corblimey


    Okay, thanks y'all. Seems there's no point in spending any money on this rig, I'll just bring the new build forward by a few months.


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    #5
    TerrorFirmer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 29,930 ✭✭✭✭TerrorFirmer


    Not to mention you'd need a new power supply for anything half decent, your processor is very poor and any modern games would ideally require 1.5Gb.

    It'd be very uneconomical to get that up to scratch, and even if you maxed out its capabilities it'd still be fairly weak (processor limited).

    I'd put up with it, and wait for the new machine. At best, just throw in a low end modern card, will run rings around the 9200 without requiring a new psu - This should work on the stock psu and is semi-decent, although pending info on it, this one should definitely work - though it's very, very low end, but supports features the 9200 does not, enabling it to play far more games. I used to have the very same card, could run BF2 at 1024x768 medium settings, whereas a 9200 will not even boot up the game, for example. The X1650Pro would run the game at high settings, if that gives you a base for your own planned uses and games.

    Maybe if you give a better idea of what it is exactly you want to play, some modern releases would get by perfectly fine on 1gb of ram, a p4, and a X1650 (if you were to buy that card), while others would barely run on lowest settings.

    Also, don't forget a trip to adverts.ie - where you should be able to get a gig of ddr ram and an old agp video card for a good price.


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