Simple Question

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g-megaman

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How do I know what to buy if I want to upgrade my old graphics?
I know nothing about graphics, and looking in the properties and on the internet has produced a whole swamp of jargon such as "chipset" and "AGP" and "PCI" etc. that I am struggling to wade through.
Thanks for your time.
 
agp and pci and pci-e are the ways that the gpu sends stuff to the rest of the system. Pci cards don't work in agp, agp cards don't work in pci or pci-e, and pci-e cards don't work in agp. I'm not sure if pci-e cards work in pci, but I doubt it, and I think pci cards work in pci-e. If you put a card into a pci slot, it'll likely be slowed down by that.

Pci-e is new, and is where most video card makers are focusing on now. AGP is older, and still works for now. You probably need an agp card, unless you're buying a whole new system.

A video card chipset is(on places like newegg anyway) just a way of referring to the generic type. Like 6600gt for example, is listed as a video card chipset, although there are plenty of different types.
 
Ok.
Having delved deeper I have encountered another problem - it seems that the price for a card with 128mb performance can vary hugely. Is there another major performance determining factor than the MBs?
 
g-megaman said:
Ok.
Having delved deeper I have encountered another problem - it seems that the price for a card with 128mb performance can vary hugely. Is there another major performance determining factor than the MBs?
Click to expand...

Very much so, the main thing that determins the perfomance of a graphics card is the GPU (GraphicsProcessingUnit).
First of all what family it is, like new Nvidia cards there is 6800, 6600, 6200, where the highest number is the family with the highest performance.
To make things more complicated, each family have several family members with different performance.

To realy find out all the differences you'll need to read some reviews and compare cards to each other.

www.tomshardware.com have done some tests where they compare cards to each other.
You can read them here.

AGP cards
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/index.html

PCI-express cards
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041222/index.html
 
PCI, AGP, and PCI-E are the different kinds of slots that the cards plug into on the motherboard. Most motherboards made today have at least a few PCI slots on them. Once upon a time, graphics cards plugged into these slots just like any other expansion card--network card, sound card, whatever. But the demand for more speed and power grew much faster with graphics cards than it did with the other kinds of cards, so a special card slot was created just for graphics cards--the AGP slot.

There were many years when card makers sold both PCI and AGP version of their cards, so that owners of old motherboards without AGP slots could still upgrade. For awhile, there wasn't a huge performance difference between the two types. It depended more on the capabilities of the graphics chip on the card than on what slot it plugged into. Eventually, though, the amount of data pumping through the cards was more than PCI slots could handle. First the card makers stopped offering the high-end cards in PCI, and then the midrange models. Now only a handful of old, low-end cards are available in PCI.

AGP cards have continued growing for a long time. The AGP slot has grown from its original speed to 2X, 4X, and now 8X, doubling its maximum possible speed each time. Any motherboard bought in the last 3 or 4 years probably has either a 4X or 8X AGP slot--check whatever manuals came with your computer to find out what slot is on your board. Some super-cheap computers come with a graphics chip built into the motherboard instead of being on a separate card. Many of this type don't have an AGP slot--a bad state of affairs. Digging up an old PCI card would then be your only option.

PCI-E is a whole different animal. It's a complete re-design of the old PCI standard for add-in cards. each PCI-E slot can have from 2 up to 16 channels for data to pass through, depending on what the card needs. The size of the slots varies depending on how many channels they have. These channels are so fast that all PCI-E motherboards made so far have only two main types of slot--2-channel for normal cards like sound and network because that's all most cards need, and 16-channel for graphics cards. They also usually have some old regular PCI slots in case you need them. PCI-E has the potential to be much faster than AGP one day, but so far the raw power of the chips on the graphics cards isn't great enough to completely use up the 8X AGP slots, so there's no real short-term benefit to going PCI-E. Plus, to go PCI-E would require basically a whole new system. Now I didn't cover special cases like SLI, but that's another story. The poster who said you can plug an old PCI graphics card into a new PCI-E card slot is wrong--totally different connectors. You could plug one into the old-style PCI slots that are included on the PCI-E motherboard, but there are very few reasons why anyone would want to do that.

So, if you're upgrading an older computer, you probably want an AGP card. If your computer is so old that it doesn't have an AGP slot, you'd be better off getting an entirely new computer.

Now, which card should you buy? That depends mainly on how much money you can spend. The first number in the model number of the card usually tells you what generation it belongs to. ATI Radeons come in 7000, 8000, 9000, and X(for 10)000. nVidia GeForces come in 2, 3, 4, 4000, 5000, and 6000. Hey they can call them whatever they want, ya know? (Both companies made many older models in years past, but they aren't worth worrying about.)

If you want to play newer games, you need either an ATI 9000 or X000 series, or an nVidia 5000 or 6000 series. In these groups of models, both companies have cards where the second number is a 2--9200, 5200, 6200. It's best to stay away from these if at all possible. In fact, the best inexpensive cards are the ATI 9600s and the nVidia 5700s. If you step up from there, go with the nVidia 6600s or ATI X700s (might as well skip the high-end cards from the ATI 9000 and nVidia 5000 series, they just cost too much for what you get). Then there's the ATI X800 models and the nVidia 6800 models--very nice, but all well over $200.

Memory (128MB, 256MB, etc.) helps performance, but the biggest improvements come from the things added to the newer designs of the graphics chips themselves. That's what the model numbers refer to, so the higher the number, the more powerful the chip. For example, I went from an nVidia 5600 with 256MB of memory to a 6800 with 128MB of memory. The new card had half as much memory, but was 2 or 3 times faster than the old card. The new graphics chip on the new card was just that much better. I wouldn't buy a card with less than 128MB these days, but other than that, higher models are more important than more memory.

Now, why do the sellers talk about chipsets? Well, all those model numbers I was throwing around just now are the model of the graphics chip, not the whole card. ATI and nVidia make the chips and then sell them to other companies, which make the cards that the chips sit on, adding memory, different types of monitor connectors, etc.. The company may name the card after the chip, or they may give the card a name that makes it very hard to tell exactly what chip is being used. So it's best to specify which chip (or "chipset") is actually on the card in order to avoid confusion.

Whew! I think I need a nap...

.
 
2 things....What are you system specs and what is your budget? That will determine the best card.
 
Just a note from someone with direct experience, you definitely can live with 128MB for a little bit longer. I know people will tell you games are finally starting to be able to use 256MB, but, bear in mind the operator here is "use." To put it simply, in Doom 3, I see terribly smooth graphics at maximum quality settings with high fsaa and af up to 1024, but, the moment I step up, I hit that memory limitation and it starts having to transfer back and forth a lot (eg using system memory to extend the video card's ram) slowing to such an amazingly slow speed it's immediatley obvious the problem isn't a lack of power. In other words, when newer better looking games come out, such as Oblivion, in the near future, you will get better results with more memory, however, you will still get good quality settings as long as you are reasonable in your resolution, fsaa, and af settings. NVidia and ATi are taking advantage of the fact that there is a lot of hype about the memory of a video card, the simple idea being that more is automatically better. This allows them to sell lower quality cards (such as the FX5600, and I think maybe I even saw a "GF4" MX -- aka GF2 MX Platinum that offered 256MB recently) for much higher prices than they are actually worth knowing that people will be fooled. Of course, when those people find out the lower quality card is only moderately better than their previous, they think they need to upgrade again to whatever the companies are touting as being so great... First worry about getting a GOOD quality video card, then worry about the memory on it.

PCI-E is the future btw, but, today, it's not REALLY better than AGP for the gamers. So, if you are planning to upgrade your video in a couple of years from now, you'll find that the agp cards cost more and don't perform as well, so you'll have to upgrade your motherboard if you want to get better video. If you plan to upgrade so long from now that you will have to upgrade the mb as well, well then, it doesn't matter. Currently, nothing can utilize the FULL power of 8x agp, so 16x PCI-E is still only moderately better for the gamers. (Mind you, as I understand it, PCI-E will benefit some people, I think cad designers like you just wouldn't believe.)
 
May I suggest you follow this procedure:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Click on the Belarc Advisor to download it. This is a free program, and I believe it to be safe. It will profile your system, give us in here a detailed analysis of what you have inside your computer, and post it in a web page, which you can then copy and post here to get a little more accurate and useful help.
 
Sorry for my innocence ;) .
(It seems evident that there is a lot to the Graphics Card world from Commander Suzdal's post...)
 
from the looks of things your currently using onboard video, ironically given the pretty solid responses thus far, an option that hasnt been mentioned...

in this variety of graphics solution your motherboard has a modest graphics chipset built in, included by intel (usually developed thru some 3rd party) that takes care of the same processing that the adapter cards mentioned thus far take care of.

this gpu is very modest in most cases and much less complex, and in addition can result in a performance hit because it is sharing its memmory with the system memmory in your computer...

so you need to determine what kinda of expansion slot you have being a 2.6 intel board its safe to say you probably have a AGP bus, 4x maybe even 8x, take a look at your bios but opening it up and taking a peek will answer all questions,

gl
-P
 
You're using an older laptop. There's no way to upgrade the video adapter on that.
 
Flo said:
You're using an older laptop. There's no way to upgrade the video adapter on that.
Click to expand...
Does that mean I am stuck with finding an old PCI card (if it is built into the motherboard as mentioned above)? :eek:
 
:mad: :mad: :mad:
Oh so that's why I never had 768MB RAM - just 752MB (I saw the "shared video part on the page)!
Tip for everyone - never buy the laptop that institutions recommend...
Oh well thanks everyone for the help...however disappointing the result...

EDIT: I just had a thought - would buying a new motherboard allow me to upgrade?
 
g-megaman said:
:mad: :mad: :mad:
Oh so that's why I never had 768MB RAM - just 752MB (I saw the "shared video part on the page)!
Tip for everyone - never buy the laptop that institutions recommend...
Oh well thanks everyone for the help...however disappointing the result...

EDIT: I just had a thought - would buying a new motherboard allow me to upgrade?
Click to expand...

you can't upgrade laptop motherboards
 
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