How can we know the compatibility of graphics card with motherboard, processor and RA

[StevenSulli]

im having intel pentium dual core E2160 processor @1.8ghz.
and a 2gb ddr2 ram @ 667mhz
and the motherboard is GIGABYTE GA G31M-S2L. the motherboard has one PCI express x 1 slot and one PCI express x 16 slot.
the chipsets are G31 express chipset (north) and ICH7 (south).
now how can i know what are all the graphics cards compatible to it.


graphics cards have core speed and memory speed. what should be these values for moderate gaming.
do i get a driver disk and few games on purchase of graphics card.
what is the use of graphics memory. what will be the use if it is a higher value like 1gb.

 

[fimbles]

Look for any graphics card that is "pci express x16" compatible.

Some gpus come with free bundled games and such.. all of them come with a driver disk, and are very easy to update from the manufacturers website.

Graphics card memory is less important than overall core, mem speed.

Ensure whatever you choose, your power supply is up to the job, as a lot of these cards require extra power to run.

Hope this helps

 

[jamesodriscoll]

First we need to establish what games you are playing and how memery intensive they are.

Looking at your system specs in the previous thread you have decent enouhg computer to run most games. As for the PCI-E x 1 and PCI-E x 16 you dont need to worry about the different speeds as long as the graphics card is a PCI-Express then it should be compatible for your motherboard.

The faster the core speed of the graphics card and the higher the memory of rhe graphcis card the better the games will run. When looking at specifications for a game it will often say the minimum and recommented specs that are required from the graphics card to run correctly.

E.G.

Video Card: 256

This means that the game requires that you have a graphics card with a mimum of 256Mb of graphics memory to run. the higher your Memory the better that the game will run.
The speed of the Card also affects how fast the computer can access the video memory on the card. Again sometimes you will see a specification for this though not always. again the fast the Clock speeds on the Card the better the card will run.

All cards come with drivers these days so you dont need to worry about drivers. Some do come with games but do not expect to get one when purchasing a card.

Hope this helps
James

 

[nismo91]

im having intel pentium dual core E2160 processor @1.8ghz.
and a 2gb ddr2 ram @ 667mhz
and the motherboard is GIGABYTE GA G31M-S2L. the motherboard has one PCI express x 1 slot and one PCI express x 16 slot.
the chipsets are G31 express chipset (north) and ICH7 (south).
now how can i know what are all the graphics cards compatible to it.


graphics cards have core speed and memory speed. what should be these values for moderate gaming.
do i get a driver disk and few games on purchase of graphics card.
what is the use of graphics memory. what will be the use if it is a higher value like 1gb.

using ur G31M ES2L as an example:
- LGA775 socket -> supports Intel processor with LGA775 architecture (check list)
- DDR2 800 -> supports desktop DDR2 RAM 533, 667 or 800
- PCI-E x16 slot -> supports graphic card that has PCI-E x16 interface
- 4x SATAII (3Gbps) slot -> supports harddisk that has SATAI (1.5Gbps) or SATAII (3Gbps)
- Intel G31 chipset -> contains Intel G31 chipset features, example Intel onboard 3100 graphics.

graphics cards have core speed and memory speed. what should be these values for moderate gaming.
do i get a driver disk and few games on purchase of graphics card.
what is the use of graphics memory. what will be the use if it is a higher value like 1gb.

Each graphic card has different values of core speed, memory speed, shader speed (nvidia), number of shaders, number of ROPs, etc. To check whether a card is faster than another, you must measure by the series and type of the card. Example: 700mhz core speed of nvidia 9500GT will never match a 700mhz 9600GT.

Graphics memory, higher the better, but not necessarily. If a card is not fast enough to "process" the 1GB, then it is useless. When you're playing 3D games, use software such as RivaTuner to check the memory usage throughout the game. Then you will see how much of MBs the card actually processes the whole time. Do note that graphics card with superior memory module will deliver better performance, i.e. 512MB GDDR3 ATI 4670 is much faster than 512MB GDDR2 4670.

 

[jxdang]

Your motherboard has a PCI Express slot so you should go with a PCI Express video card. This gives you the fastest speed and the most bandwidth between your video card and the CPU. Most modern DX11 video cards come standard with 1GB of memory (higher end cards have even more memory). For most games 1GB is adequate. This memory is used to do graphical computations such as polygons and vertices in games. Like CPU clock speed video cards have GPU clock speeds too. The higher the GPU clock speed the faster or smoother your gamin experience.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

About the posts above, TL, DR:
Anything.

graphics cards have core speed and memory speed. what should be these values for moderate gaming.
do i get a driver disk and few games on purchase of graphics card.
what is the use of graphics memory. what will be the use if it is a higher value like 1gb.

Please post a budget, and complete powersupply specifications.