suggestion for a good video card

[spence]

:stickout: :stickout: i would like to buy a new video that can play with most of today video games. i hope the video will deliver speed

specs on compact Presario

intel (r) Pentium 4 processor 3.2 gHz , (515 J (a) - I don't know what means)

512MB Pc2- 3200 DDR@ sdram, 160 GB Serial ATA hard drive.

Intergrated intel Extreme graphics card with up to 128 MB shared video memory.


what kind of video card would best suit this Intel and also I would notice a difference in game play.

thanks :slurp:

 

[DonNagual]

Before you can upgrade, you need to confirm a few things.

1. Does your motherboard have an open AGP slot?
2. If yes, what kind? 4x? 8x?
3. What is the make/model of your current power supply and how many watts is it rated at? Quite often old PSUs are not good enough to power newer cards.

 

[spence]

thanks for repling

my P4 intel 3.2 gHz has 250 watts power supply. This seems really low but what do u expect from a compact presario. If i had know this before that my computer is very limited in upgrading I would not purchased it. Actually this is my first time owning an intel. I prefer Amd.

the mother board is Asus the Pc is sr 1430 nx what ever that means???
there is no agp slot only 3 pci slots.

is it worth getting a video card?

 

[DonNagual]

Well, it all depends on what your expectations are with the new card. HERE is a list of what would fit into your computer.

Now, these cards will improve your computers performance. But still, today's newer games (Battlefield2 etc) are not going to be happy on your system at all. I'd say with your system and say.... a 5200 PCI card, you should be able to play last years games on mid to low settings.

You should be looking at the cards that support directx 9, and have a 128bit interface.

Of course, there are no gaurantees that these cards will work in your system with that power supply.

Check the Compaq website, and see if they have a list of approved video expansion cards. They probably don't but worth looking first.

 

[vnf4ultra]

You can improve your system performance with a pci video card, especially since integrated shares(steals IMO ) your system ram, so you have less ram to use for apps/games. Here's the best pci card I know of, it's ok, but not high end.
http://www.chumbo.com/Info.aspx?id=304966
It should be able to play most modern games if you use a low screen resolution(800x600, 1024x768), and set the details down on really demanding games.
Also, it's best to not have any other pci cards, as these will take bandwidth away from the video card, especially pci sound cards.