Graphic Card Question

Hypn0t1ze · March 26th, 2008, 05:32 AM

I own a COMPAQ Presario S7300CL(says on the bottom) and have never hooked up a graphic card or anything INSIDE the tower. Now i play games online but im going to update my card but im thinking nVidia GeForce, im just not sure which one and im not sure if i need anything else for a smooth gaming experience, if you guys have any insite for me that would be nice..

I currently have: COMPAQ 7550 Color Monitor on Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller .. Now what the heck does this mean, becides "sucky".. lol

Compaq
Presario
Intel(R)
Celeron(R) CPU 2.80GHz
2.80GHz
504 MB of RAM

KarmaKiller · March 26th, 2008, 07:35 AM

Hi, Welcome to TIMO.
That means your current graphic card is built in to your motherboard. If your wanting a new graphics card, then we're gonna have to have an idea of what kind of connectors you have.
Download and run PC Wizard. Click on the mainboard tab, not tell us if you have PCI/AGP/ or PCI-E slots.
Also a budget would be helpful.

Hypn0t1ze · March 26th, 2008, 08:15 AM

Manufacturer: COMPAQ Presario 061
Mainboard: MSI Gamila/Giovani/Neon series
Bios: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
Chipset: Intel i845G
Physical Memory: 512 MB DDR-SDRAM
LPC Bus: Yes
PCI Bus: Yes
AGP Bus: Yes
USB Bus: Yes
SMBus/i2c Bus: Yes
Bus Hyper Transport: No
Bus CardBus: No
Bus FireWire: No

..Thanks for the welcome lol

KarmaKiller · March 26th, 2008, 08:23 AM

Ok, it seems that you have a AGP slot.
Now on to the next set of questions.
1.) What is your budget for the upgrade?
2) What country to you live in?
3.) Please list the specs of your Power Supply too. You need to make sure you have enough power to power the new card. All the details are on the sticker on the side of the power supply. You'll have to pop open the side of your tower to see it though.
What we need to know is the Manufactures name, total power output, and the amps output on the 12v+rail.

I'm out the door now, so if nobody has helped you by the time I get home, I'll post a reply.

Big_Daddy · March 26th, 2008, 09:41 AM

If you have access to eBay, you can get AGP cards cheaper. For your processor, I wouldn't bust out with too much card. I think you are only allocating 8M to video. That's gonna hurt your gameplay. Up that to at least 32M in your BIOS.

Mostly, you need more RAM. Cheap RAM($30) + cheap video card (<$50) = less suckiness.

Hypn0t1ze · March 26th, 2008, 08:02 PM

Live in the U.S. and ill spend from $100 to $200 if its worth it

HeroesForGhosts · March 27th, 2008, 01:46 AM

You could get a Radeon HD 2600 Pro 512MB graphics card and an additional 1GB of DDR RAM for your system for about 125$. Not a great card, but with AGP your options are limited. I know you said you wanted an nVidia card, but honestly this one will outperform the similar GeForce AGP offerings (7600 GT). Rest assured it's a hell of a lot better than integrated graphics, and with that card plus some more RAM your system's gaming performance would dramatically improve.Whether or not it's worth it is up to you. With 1.5GB of RAM and a 2600 Pro, you'd be able to play old games no problem, but you'd be restricted to low settings and low resolutions on some more modern games.1) Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E168142410722) RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231036

Big_Daddy · March 27th, 2008, 10:18 AM

"this one will outperform the similar GeForce AGP offerings (7600 GT)."

White man speak with forked tongue.

The best Ge7 card I can find in AGP is a 7600GS which is a poor performer.

ShyguyXPC · March 27th, 2008, 06:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Big_Daddy

"this one will outperform the similar GeForce AGP offerings (7600 GT)."

White man speak with forked tongue.

The best Ge7 card I can find in AGP is a 7600GS which is a poor performer.

how about a 7800GS?

http://clearancezone.directron.us/item.php?list=277

Or for a bit more an X1950 Pro...

http://clearancezone.directron.us/item.php?list=540

KarmaKiller · March 27th, 2008, 06:43 PM

Or if your wanting to spend all the budget, look at the ATI 3850. AFAIK, it's the best AGP card you can get, performance wise that is.
But I agree with big daddy, I'd get a 2gig set, or at least another gig of RAM before I went on to upgrading the graphics cards. That would help in game performance tremendously...