what is ACP and PCI ?

Question

I'm just learning about memory and graphics cards... this time I'm looking into the graphics card. I know i should get something like NVidia GeForce 7300 or more, or ATI Radeon x1800 or something.. but I keep running into things like "when you have an acp system, make sure you only install..." blah blah... What do those letters mean?

If i'm not careful I will get lost in all this.. but I understand PCI (express) is the way to go. Jedimaster advises to get an onboard graphics card.... I have one.. which is not good enough... That';s why I want a better one. I have intel(r) but I cant play Second life for instance...

sorry, jedimaster advised a motherboard with........ which I have..

Asusp5p800-mx.
I can upgrade ram to 4 Gb, but I'm still not sure which video card/graphics card for heavy duty multimedia... I know it should be PCI... but other than that.. Thanks y'all for giving so many answers :)

Hey jedi, (and others) thanks. I finally start to understand i think.... that I have to check the CHIPSET if it is compatible with an pci card... correct? hum.... or that they will support eachother... something like that. I will look into it tomorrow. it's late here.. my brain wants to sleep :))

Answer 1

AGP and PCI express...

DO NOT GET AN AGP CARD!!!

i have an ATI X800 AGP card and I cant use it anymore. the biggest problem is that motherboards are not being built with AGP slots anymore, everything is going over to PCI express. I would suggest getting a motherboard with integrated graphics, then you can not only upgrade to PCI card, you can run multiple monitors...

EDIT

check the chipset before you start considering cards. I have an old Pentium 4 with an AGP slot, BUT it has a VIA chip set. The VIA and the ATI cards don't like each other and ATI offers NO fix of any kind. I have been fighting this issue for about 2 years now. I finally upgraded to a new motherboard, processor, and memory. I have found on newegg.com a couple of socket 940 and AM2 boards with AGP but availability is a serious issue. I will email you the specs on the rig I ordered from zipzoomfly.com.

Here is the info incase there is a problem with the email.

Processor
https://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80962-8

Mainboard-I got this one because the graphics are built in and better than my X800

https://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=247141

Memory

https://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=85267

I also added a new case. If by chance you decide to upgrade to this motherboard be aware (i wasn't) that it has only 1 (one) IDE controller. I have CD and DVD drives and 2 hard drives. If you have IDE hard drives there is a converter at CompUSA that will convert them to SATA.

Answer 2

Make sure your computer will be compatible with a PCI card. It also depends how heavy is heavy. I mean if you are talking some light video and sound editing, with maybe some easy photoshop then an Nvidia card 6 series or better will be fine.

However, if you are editing film, doing 3d rendering with something like Mya, making lightsabers in photoshop or want to play any recent video games, then you want an Nvidia 7 series or 8 series if you can afford it.

Answer 3

You mean "AGP".

AGP stands for "Accelerated Graphics Port" and is basically just a dedicated port for graphics cards.

PCI stands for "Peripherial Component Interconnect/Interface" and is made for things like modems, network cards and sound cards.

There is another port called PCI-express. The 16x version is made for faster video cards than the AGP. The 1x version is similar to the original PCI but is just smaller.

Answer 4

they are 2 different types of graphics card bus. AGP is older and has narrow bandwidth. PCI-E is newer and has more bandwidth and with some motherboards you can link 2 video cards together using 2 pci-e slots. It is becoming more and more difficult to find good agp cards as manufacturers are beginning to make only pci-e cards...because of this, agp cards tend to be a little bit more expensive.

Answer 5

I think you mean AGP which stands for Accelerated Graphics Port.

PCI stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect.

PCI is the older standard for video cards, but many other cards still use the PCI interface like network cards, modems, etc). AGP is newer, but it is starting to get a little dated as well and is being slowly taken over by PCI-Express. (PCI-X)