which graphics card can I get?

Im not sure which type of graphics card to get, my PC has onboard graphics so is it possible to attach a new one?
Im pretty sure my motherboard doesnt support PCI Express, so its AGP?

If I brought a Radeon 256MB card for 40 bucks would it be useless now?

what about this one? http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-256-P1-N399-LX-e-GeForce-256MB-Graphics/dp/B000V4PYTC/ref=pd_bbs_sr_6?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1227830105&sr=8-6

Buy a GeForce GTX 280. Anything else is really crap.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_280_us.html

You're personally guaranteeing that's compatible with his motherboard ( the make and model of which he hasn't even revealed ) then are you?

Yes, it will work with any ASUS P5K or better motherboard. I mean you don't really care about an 80$ motherboard when the main component of your system is the GPU, which costs around 400$ (so you can only buy 3 GPU's per month).

Sorry, I've obvously completely missed where he said that he had an ASUS P5K or better motherboard.

Well, upgrading a PC is always like that. You buy one component, then you buy another component and realize the first one is obsolete, so you need to buy all parts. I hate it too, I wish you could still use ISA cards and SIMM memory :)

Jeremy, you have to tell us what your doing with it?

When I built my last PC I decided it was for work mainly, so thats graphics work, programming and CG stuff. So I just went with some cheap 7200's (2 of them in non SLI).

They cost me £12 each about 6 months ago and I have now got 4 fairly reasonable graphics outputs, 3 of which I am using for my monitors.

If its for games then.............I dunno. If its for 'work' then just get something cheap and spend the money on the monitors.

Rubbish. I have a GTX260 and that works a treat. My brother 8800GTS also works really well, for pretty much everything that's out right now.

Yes, of course the 8800 GTS is still top of the notch, and for sure beats all ATI cards for the next 10 years, but enthusiasts might already get a GTX 280 to be 20 years ahead of ATI :P

Have you seen the benchmarks for the HD4870? I love Nvidia, but ATI cards are no slouches these days.

I think most benchmarks don't measure the GPU performance. How could they, ATI does not support much hardware features, no instancing, no animations, no physics, no cuda.
I just saw that the new Lenovo laptops (W400-700) have all ATI cards, so I guess I need to buy a MacBook pro/Alienware/Sony VAIO next?

They measure performance in real world situations. Check the VGA benchmarks at Tom's Hardware. Who cares what the GPU performance is like if the card runs what you what at the framerate you're happy with? (and with decent power consumption, noise levels, etc)

oh sorry i didnt specify, I* just wanted to spend about 40 bucks on a semi-decent graphics card, my motherboard is about 6 years old though!

What motherboard do you actually have?

If you're not sure, try running CPU-Z: http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpuz_148.zip

It will tell you the make & model of motherboard, which one can use to look up the specs to find out exactly what kind of graphics bus you have on there (AGP , PCI Express, or just plain vanilla PCI)

Without knowing for sure what bus you have, and card recommendations are going to be pointless.

Yep, definitely need to know model and make. It is possible that you have an AGP slot, I've certainly seen cards with onboard video and an AGP slot as well, but it's by no means certain. Of course, you still might be able to find something in PCI, but that might not be any better than your onboard.

If it's AGP depending on the possibilities of the powersupply and budget/performance wishes people mostly buy either a ATI/AMD 1650, 3650 or a 3850. Benchmarks and reviews can be found on the net.

@Lumooja
Either you're doing this on purpose (fanboy) or you simply have no clue about gfx cards.

An 6200 is utter crap. I would go for possibly a 7300GT that is AGP, which would at least be powerful enough to run *SOME* games.

If you need an AGP card I have a Geforce 6800 Ultra lying around you can have for £25, although I'm guessing you are probably in the US which will make shipping prohibitively expensive.

There are several kinds of AGP slots so you need to do as Xlsior suggests and run CPU-Z or even better have a look at your motherboard and get the make and model number.

Darkheart

yea stay away from the 6000 range, they where the last range that a certain chip was used in and it overstretched it. There are power and heating problems with a lot of them.

I had a XFX 6200 and had it replaced and still had problems with the new one.

I've got AGP and have a 3850 ATI gfx card, it's the best you can get without going for a new motherboard, it also handles any game I throw at it.

First make sure what kind of GFX cards are suported by your mainboard, having the same slot doesn't mean it will work. With AGP there are different voltages used and some combinations might kill your hardware.

Another thing to keep in mind is the power a GFX card needs, you might end up buying a new powersupply as well. Most standard PC's with onboard graphics mostly only have a 200-300w powersuply in it, wich in combination with some cards is much too low now.

Personally I think upgrading an AGP card is a somewhat pointless effort. For whatever it costs to upgrade (+ a new PSU maybe), it's only going to be a tiny increase in performance compared to modern video cards (which are way, way faster than anything AGP can support). There comes a point where upgrading old hardware becomes a waste of money, unless you really don't plan on getting a new PC for a few years, and there are some old games you want to run slightly better.

>Im not sure which type of graphics card to get, my PC has onboard
>graphics so is it possible to attach a new one?

yes, but you should find out what mainboard you have.

CPU-Z is good, but some mainboards have an integrated AGP bus, while not having an AGP socket, so you should open your PC and look at the mainboard(without touching it, unless you are grounded).

>Im pretty sure my motherboard doesnt support PCI Express, so its AGP?

or it could be PCI with integrated AGP graphics.

7800GS is pretty good but finding any decent AGP cards is tough. I have one and it plays almost all games at reasonable FPS. About 5x faster than my old 6600.

Far Cry 2
Gears of war
Witcher
Grid
COD5

They are all playable with mostly highest settings but no AA at 1024x768. The later 7800GS was very low power and came out with passive cooled versions for people wanting a silent PC.

I don't think you will have much luck with a good AGP card though, they tend to be a bit of a novelty, so rare and expensive.

Little OT - my only sound neuron is waked up and it is saying 'BRL, why not add to user-profile a field for 'graphic cards' just to know what is the situation of Brl-userbase? Do you have seen Valve-Steam's statistic report?'
My neuron goes back to sleep...

I have a 256MB 7600GT which is AGP. Got it from Overclockers for about £70.

You really should check the motherboard, though. Some older motherboards don't have PCI-E *or* AGP and that being the case you're stuck with trying to find a PCI graphics card.

You shood by nVidia card, thay got wot games krave...

comparrison of modern video cards running crysis. unfortunately my card is too old for the list. Gives you an idea of how far things have come in a couple of years.