Wanting to upgrade my Graphics card, any suggestions.

[iowamale]

my current system is as follows, P4 3.4GHz with 2gig of ram running on a Asus P5ND2-SLI mb.  I am currently only running 1 Radon 1650 512mb video card and am looking for suggestions on upgrades.  I would like to stay with in the $150.00 price range.  I built this system from parts bought off Ebay.  So any suggestions would be very helpful.  Thanks in advance.

[Cassea]

In order of preferenece (slow to fast)ATI 3850Nvidia 9600GTATI 3870Nvidia 8800GTAll under $150... try and get a card with 512meg onboard.-JB

[iowamale]

Ok, got a new question, I need to know what the differance is between PCIe and PCIe2, and will a PCIe2 card work in a PCIe slot?

[Cassea]

Yes... same as USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 - both are inter-changeable but you get a small boost in speed if you put a PCIx16 2.0 video card in a PCIx16 2.0 slot <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />If you have a very small power supply you may need to increase that but all of the cards I listed take very little power as compared to the last generation. The 9600GT and 3850 take very very little power <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />-JB

[iowamale]

Is there a physical differance between the 2 PCI slots or is it all software driven?  if its all software driven then I should be able to upgrade my system correct.

[Miladi]

<cite>iowamale wrote:</cite><blockquote>Is there a physical differance between the 2 PCI slots or is it all software driven?  if its all software driven then I should be able to upgrade my system correct.</blockquote>The card slots are physically the same, the PCIE2 slot just operates at twice the speed of the PCIE1 slots. The 2.0 cards will work no problem in almost any 1.0 slot, its rare that they don't, but it does happen.

[gribuz]

I would recommend either the 8800 GT or 8800 GTS.Those cards will give u the best value for the money <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />There is no physical difference between PCI Express 1.0 and PCI Express 2.0I think its just a performance boost where 1.0 has a bandwidth of 16x lanes and 2.0 of 32x.And they are backward compatible <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Jesdyr]

<cite>Miladian wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>iowamale wrote:</cite><blockquote>Is there a physical differance between the 2 PCI slots or is it all software driven?  if its all software driven then I should be able to upgrade my system correct.</blockquote>The card slots are physically the same, the PCIE2 slot just operates at twice the speed of the PCIE1 slots. The 2.0 cards will work no problem in almost any 1.0 slot, its rare that they don't, but it does happen.</blockquote>I know that the EVGA 8800 series cards have some issues with some PCIe1.x motherboards .. I ran into the problem and they said they had a firmware update that should fix it .. but .. how do you update firmware if you can't get the card to init ? <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> But yah .. there should be no problem and until I ran into one, I had never heard of one <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />