graphic card question??????

[stewsy]

My son wants a graphic card installing into his pc so he can play some games,problem is that the motherboard only has 3 pci slots and nowhere for a graphic card to go into.Can any1 help me out with this one please?????? :splease

[easy]

so it doesn't have an AGP slot? ie. onboard graphics?

[stewsy]

No,all it has is three white pci slots

[easy]

Sounds like either a cheap mobo or an old one, best i can come up with is buy a new motherboard and get an ok graphics card. Quite costly tho.

[Sam_41]

easy- I had a mobo which didnt have any AGP slots but DID have onboard graphics. I dont know anything about onboard graphics, but is it possible to remove the onboard gfx card and put an AGP card in, or is the onboard gfx actually part of the mobo and cannot be removed?

stewsy- I had the same problem, think you'll have to buy a cheap mobo with an AGP slot etc if you want a cheap solution.

[easy]

U got it sam_41, as far as i know you cant upgrade the hardware section of an built in graphics card. You could however maybe upgrade the software and tweak it to make it faster. Just best to buy mobo's with an AGP slot

[kjun]

you can get ok cards that are PCI, depends how good a card you want really

[harryb]

yeah you dont have to buy a new mobo to play games you get pci geforce fx's and radeons..

ill get you a few prices in a sec.. and you cannot tweak onboard graphics or overclock them unless you wanna blow your mobo just not worth the effort

[sniper]

are you saying the 3 pci slots are full thats why you are looking for an alternative ? if so whats in the slots ?

[harryb]

right i can tell you...

if you can only have a PCI Video card, these cards are ones that are highly recommended:
nVidia Geforce FX 5200
nVidia Geforce FX 5600
ATI Radeon 9100
ATI Radeon 9200

[stewsy]

Cheers guys for all that advice,I'll check up on those graphic cards aswell Harry B :thumbs

[Crossman]

Hi Stewsy,

I just put a 64MB PCI NVidia GeForce2 MX400 in someones PC last week who had a PCI & ISA only mainboard. Works very well considering it's PCI and not AGP. Plays most 3D games at a good refresh rate @ 1024x768 and some up to 1280x1024. Fairly cheap as well, about £30.

A 128MB one also exists with TVout and DVI as well for about £45 but seems a bit overkill on a dating PC, also a 32MB one exists but they only about a quid cheaper than the 64MB one so they seem poor value. I used to put ATI in them but they seem to be a bit fussy about the PCI bus, typically not powering up, and then the mainboard beeping to say it cant find a graphics card.

Good luck,

Crossman.

[stewsy]

Thanks for that,going down to my local computer fair at weekend.At least I'll know what to ask for now. :thumbs