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PCI Graphics Cards PCI Express

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
should i go out today and buy a 512mb PCI graphics card if it wont work on a PCI express board next year.

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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i got AGP graphics ^^

    Go for that, its ok, not much difference between AGP and PCI-E i think...except that PCI-E can go a lot faster with data transfer.

    ...or spend a load and get twin cards :P
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Well, if you aren't upgrading your motherboard, what can it accept? Most motherboards for the past 5 years have AGP! You'll find an AGP card runs faster than typical PCI, and will be far cheaper too. When I bought my mx440 all those years ago it was 50 pounds, the PCI was 100!!!

    Are you computer-confident enough to open up your case and tell us what motherboard you have :) then i'll tell you exactly what to buy for different budgets. And no doubt someone will come along and say 'nooo dont get ati get nvidia!!'.

    If you want to future proof then yes PCI-E is definately the way to go, AGP cards dont get any more powerful than the x800 / 6800 AFAIK. Pixel shader 3.0 which is going to be used on the vista platform and a lot of apps that come along with that generation therefore wont be on AGP cards I don't think.

    The problem with, unless you have a fairly recent motherboard, it's not going to have a PCI-E port, so you're going to have to upgrade your motherboard I'm afraid. At the budget end this will cost you £40 ish for one with a nforce570 chipset (slightly dated but does the job).

    Malheuresement, upgrading the motherboard will require a new processor. This will cost at the low end £60, and I'd expect you to pay up to £120 for a good one. Anything more than that and imo it enters the 'exclusive' group where the price is just because it's fairly new tech, rather than paying for what you're getting. £700 processors!

    And then your graphics card.

    So it all starts to add up unfortunately :(.

    So, motherboard name and make :). On it it should have some letters printed :thumb:
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    you're description maps my thought patterns exactly.
    i've just 'upgraded' from geforce 5200 128mb PCI to AGP 5500 256mb and the drivers wont work - and i think it was a stupid idea anyway because of future proofing the PC. i've decided upgrading in this case is out the question because as you note too, it'll all be as weak as the slowest componant. I'm also going to take this geforce 5500 card back on monday cos it hasn't worked as easily as i'd like.

    i guess when vista comes out, ill get PCI-express, Sata hard discs and dual core processors. (I had to throw away a fairly nice AWE64 soundcard after ISA was dropped).

    any thoughts you guys.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    TheShyBoyInTheCorner wrote:
    If you want to future proof then yes PCI-E is definately the way to go, AGP cards dont get any more powerful than the x800 / 6800 AFAIK. Pixel shader 3.0 which is going to be used on the vista platform and a lot of apps that come along with that generation therefore wont be on AGP cards I don't think.

    You havn't seen the 'Gainward BLISS GeForce 7800 GS+ 512MB GDDR3' then!
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