Upgrading Computer Hardware
witch:
OK, I'd have to say I'm an nvidia fan because as far as I understand, it is supported by more games. Also my motherboard is an nvidia chipset which for me gave greater compatibility. I've had no problems with the card itself, good performance, but a couple of problems with drivers - don't know if that's anything to do with a 64 bit chip mind you.
You will have to look and see what your type of slot is, there's a link I made in an earlier thread here about a similar problem. Bissela on MikeInside forums showed pictures and had explanations of all the different types of slots. There are heaps of pictorial tutorials on the net about installing cards.
Renatus:
Diala, whoever told you that you that if you had a Radeon you couldn't have an Nvidia card or vice versa was talking out of their bum, or got the brand names confused with AGP and PCI, the types of slots video cards and suchlike can go into. In addition to looking, if your computer was prebuilt when you bought it (Dell, HP, and the like, something you buy that has been made in a factory rather than assembled individually by a technician), you can look up the model number on the manufacturer's website and it will probably give you the stats for it.
witch:
Bissela's pics for video card slots Try the 10th post down, don't know how to link exactly.
Bissela is at Uni learning to be a computer assembler amongst other things & is very knowledgeable.
aussieone:
Welcome Deedee.....
nice to see you here and thanks for the info :)
Motoki:
Well first off, no video card brand is more compatible than the other. Thanks to Microsoft ;) they've standardized 3D on PCs in the form of DirectX so as long as you get a card that supports the latest version of DirectX (that currently being version 9), you'll have no problems with a game not being supported by the card. There's another 3D standard called OpenGL, but all ATI and Nvidia cards as well as pretty much every 3D card I've ever come across support this.
The only real thing you want to look out for is what type of slot the card uses and if it's the same type as your motherboard's video card slot. There's only 3 types really, PCI, AGP and PCI-Express aka PCI-E. In most cases you'll want AGP as this is the most common expansion slot currently used for video cards. Some really new motherboards support PCI-E, but if you haven't bought your computer in the last 6 months or so then yours most likely does not. Almost all motheroard support the regular PCI slot and have several of them (these are generic slots used not just for video cards but any type of expansion card), but the AGP slot is faster and most video cards from the last few years do not support PCI.
I'm 99% sure your computer uses the AGP slot but check your motherboard manual if you have it to be sure.
As for how easy or hard it is to install, if you are comfortable installing a stick of RAM yourself then installing the video card should be no problem for you because it's about easy. Neither is difficult, but I know a lot of people freak out about opening a computer, sounds like that doesn't worry you though so that's good. :) Make sure you check the return policy of the store you buy from if you are installing yourself. Most times if the card or RAM stick is a lemon you will know right away. It does happen sometimes and also with so many different pieces of hardware interacting there can sometimes be incompatibilities as Deedee noted.
Installing an ATI after Nvidia or vice versa should be no problem, in fact, I used to run an ATI video card on an Nvidia motherboard for several years and it ran fine. ;)
Another word of advice on ATI and Nividia is that it's rather like PCs and Macs in that there are rabid fans on both sides of the fence that love one company and hate the other. In reality, ATI and Nvidia cards are fairly comparable. It's more important that you have a recent video card that supports recent innovations in 3D and has a decent amount of video memory (I wouldn't go for less than 128MB of video RAM if you can help it) than which company you go with. Speaking purely from personal experience, the last few cards I have had were from the ATI Radeon series and they've worked great for me including TS2, but I know people that have had great experience with Nvidia cards as well.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page