Graphics upgrade for a budget PC

Monkeynuts_2

Hi All,

I've recently bought a year old emachines 5260 from a friend for not very much.

I figured as it had a PCI-E slot (no agp slot) I could stick in a good graphics card to bring it upto scratch - turned out it was PCI-E x1 not x16 .

I've found a PCI Geforce 6200 256 mb & FX5200 cards on dabs for 40 pounds or but dont know if this is going to provide much of an improvement over the onboard graphics intel 82915G/GV/910GL.

Would I get a worthwhile improvement out of around 150 putting a new motherboard and PCI-E/AGP card in or saving some cash and going with one of the pci cards?

Specs are;
P4 3.0 GHz
1 GB ram

Thanks,

wildheart_2

pci and pci-e are not compatible.

niceguyrichy

personally I'd be inclined to get a new mobo (I'll presume it's sk775, you can pick up a good quality B stock that's C2D compatible for future upgrading for 30 odd quid), and with the price of gfx cards atm (an X1950Pro can be had for under £100) you'd be set for a good while

BillScarab

Fitting a PCI Graphics card should improve the performance, even if only because the onboard Graphics will be using some of your system memory so putting in a card with it's own memory will free this up. The actual performance of the card should be better as well.

A lot depends on what you want to do with your PC and how much your prepared to spend. You could get a new Motherboard and PCI-E Graphics card which would be better for the long term. There are lots of PCI-E cards on ebay that would be suitable.

Bear in mind that if you replace the motherboard you will have to re-install windows.

Mobeer

I think someone has asked this question before:
http://forums.pcworld.co.nz/showthread.php?t=59000

In that article the user did have a x16 PCI express slot?

GoofyGAT

Mobeer wrote: »

I think someone has asked this question before:
http://forums.pcworld.co.nz/showthread.php?t=59000
In that article the user did have a x16 PCI express slot?

No, unfortunately the European/UK model motherboard only has a 1x slot (source):

Intel® D915GVWB Mainboard specs (checked Intel official specs to confirm this).

For normal, everyday Windows/Office/2D tasks, the onboard graphics is more than sufficient - fitting a 6200/FX5200 isn't going to be an improvement in this area. However, if you want to improve overall performance, & you've only 512Mb RAM upgrade it to 1Gb (around £20 for PC3200) instead of the graphics card. If it's for gaming, then a reasonably good dedicated GPU is required, together with the other upgrades.

To add to what the others have said regards upgrading motherboard+GPU, you may need a new PSU too depending on the graphics card you go for. If it's a basic one, then there's no need - but this would defeat the whole purpose of upgrading in the first place. If you do go down this route, remember to get a motherboard that supports the older DDR RAM (newer is DDR2). Also, add the 512Mb RAM, especially if you're going to be playing modernish games. For £150 you will get a substantial improvement, but if you're not a gamer save your cash & just get the RAM. G