Hello all,
I'm planning to upgrade from my ancient Intel 82845G graphics card to a new one, but I'm unsure if the new ones are compatible with my motherboard. It's ASRock P4i45GX PE.

As this is my first post here, I can't post links of the motherboard specs. So, you can just google ASRock P4i45GX PE and check it out.

It says something that the maximum graphics memory is 64 MB, but I'm unsure about it. So, are there any geeks out there who can help? I'll be glad.

Hello henson93. Welcome to Techspot.

It seems that your motherboard is based on the Intel 845G chipset. I cannot find your mobo's product sheet anywhere but it's likely that you have an AGP 4X slot. The most powerful AGP card that would be comaptible with AGP 4X is the Radeon HD 4670. However, they cost over $100 and definitely cannot provide the performance levels of newer (PCI-E) cards available at a similar cost.

It would be helpful if you could confirm whether you have that AGP 4X slot on your mobo. Also, what is the reason for your upgrading to a discrete GPU. Are you looking to play games?

Yes, Ritwik7. I looked up the instruction manual. It supports AGP 4X and AGP 8X. What are the best options now?

Many thanks,
henson93

Yes, I am looking to play games. That's the reason I want to upgrade.

The bad news is that you're never going to bring your machine up to the "I can play Crysis" point. You can look through this thread, although I'm not sure how much is relevant; http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic51437.html

Also, there's this; http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-56976-Great-games-that-dont-need-great-hardware-to-run.html.

when you say "Intel graphics card" that's actually what is called "integrated graphics' as they're included right on the motherboard. That said, even the next generation of " intel integrated graphics (915 chipset) would allow the graphics to utilize 244(?) MB of system memory. That with at least 512MB of RAM installed in the system.

In doing a Google search for your mobo, all I came up with was 5 pages of driver downloads, and then it went into foreign languages and alphabets. Point being that this is basically what is known as "legacy" equipment, and it would probably not be a good idea to get your hopes up too high with respect to performance.

In that case I concur with the Captain. You're better off saving some cash and upgrading to a completely new system. If you decide that you still would like to upgrade, then the Radeon HD 4670 is probably the best you can get.