Whats the easiest/best way to upgrade from an out of date AGP graphics card to a PCI-E card?

Question

I love PC gaming, but I know little about graphic cards, I litterally just did the research to find out that my PC most likely cant accept a PCI-E card, since there are very few motherboards that have an AGP slot, and a PCI-E, im using a Ge-force fx 5200 or something like that, its been awhile since I looked at it, heh..
Anyways though was wondering if I should just get a new comp alltogether, or buy a PCI-E motherboard for my current PC, im not overly knowledgable on PC's but I have installed/swapped out a few pieces of hardware between several PC's on my own.

Answer 1

If you want to go PCIe, get a new PC.

BUT, assuming you have an AGP 8x slot and something around a P4 2.4Ghz processor, why not get an AGP card? ATI has the x1950 AGP that is just fine. I have an HIS x1950 256mb AGP card and it does gaming just great. They will be making Directx10 AGP cards by the end of this year. Bare in mind that you will most likely need a new power supply to go with the newer AGP cards because they typically use the PCIe type power connections. They are out there, so you will need to shop around.

Answer 2

Ok if you are in england, there's a simple way you can do this

first of all, save some money

second of all find the nearest and local computer fair

third, buy


AMD x2 64 4.4 gig processor about £70
Asus motherboard sli 32 motherboard about £70-80
1 gig of DDR 2 800 memory £40
1 case £30-40
1 650 W power supply £20
1 250gig sata 2 hard dirve £55
GFORCE 79xx GT 500 MB DDR 3PCI-E card £120-150 go for the top, an there's plenty of review sites onthe tinternet and all you have to do is put in Gforce 7950 GT500 MB REVIEW
and have a look

this basic system will Run quake 4 in top resolution mode
CnC3 will look stunning, and my mates constantly drool when they play on mine
the sound will be onthe motherboard, but Iruns my 7.1 spks off it and the sound is good as the farther inlaw is a sound engineer and loved the quality, alhthough they are creative labs speakers the sound card still is pretty good NOw for around £500 you can have a system that is powerful in gaming terms
it's versatle it's £600-700 cheeper then something that pc would would match, as well you know in the end of the day you built it. and if you dont know how to there's plenty of INTERNET sites to show you how to, or you should have a friend who's competant at building there's enought of us tech heads out there

by the way, NEVER INSTALL VISTA THE GAMERS CHOICE IS XP

hope this helps


Mark

Answer 3

If you want a new motherboard with PCI-E, you need to find out if any are made that support your current CPU and RAM. If not, you are looking at replacing every expensive component and a new computer may be the better choice.

Find the free program CPUz on the internet and run it. It will tell you the exact CPU that you have and what RAM you have. Then search on your favorite computer parts web site (mine is newegg.com) to see if any motherboards support that CPU and RAM. Do a search of motherboards that support your CPU socket type and have PCI-E and check if your RAM will work. If you have a Intel 2.0GHz P4 or higher or an AMD 64 (socket 939) you will probably find something that will work.

Good Luck.

Answer 4

To the second guy who answered, feel free to not answer the question if you don't know what you're talking about. The card he listed IS a 512MB card, and AGP cards CAN use 512MB of memory. Moron. Questioner: The HD 3850 is the best available AGP-slot card. There simply are no better ones on the market. It's capable of running most games out on max settings, if the rest of your PC is up-to-speed. I recommend it if you really don't want to upgrade your system to PCI-Express.

Answer 5

if you want a PCI-E graphics card you will need a new board and probably a new processor, but since your not a technician i would just recommend to look for a good AGP card there are many thats good for gaming

Answer 6

From the way it looks, your pc is outdated. If you want to upgrade to PCIE, you will need a new video card, processor, motherboard, and mostly ram. That is almost a whole new computer minus a few minor parts. I recommend you get a new computer and use the old one as a backup or something.

Answer 7

Buy a new computer you would have to upgrade most of yourstuff anyway so buy new and pass the old clunker on to someone else.

Answer 8

if you would like to upgrade your graphics card than i would highly suggest you upgrade your motherboard so that it can support pci-e graphics card.

Answer 9

u have to change ur mother board