motherboard/graphics card compatibility

overwhelmed_2

Hiya,
I wonder if anyone can help me ?
I'm wanting to upgrade my graphics card, but can't find out whether it is possible to put a 128Mb Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 onto my Asus A7V133 motherboard.
I've tried the Asus site, the Nvidia site, and loads of different searches, but no luck.
Does anyone know where I might find this info?
???
Thanks.

Godders

Simple answer - Should be fine.

Why I say this (detailed bit):

When buying graphics cards the two key things are the Interface type and (in a lesser amount) the speed.

Interface type first.  Most new cards are classed as AGP cards - whereas old cards are PCI (PCI slots on your motherboard are white - AGP are Brown and set slightly further away from the edge of the case than the PCI ones)

According to this link:

http://www.asus.com.tw/mb/socketa/a7v133/specification.htm

the motherboard you specify supports AGP, and every FX 5200 based card I can find as follows:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/FX5200_Series.html

says it is AGP.  - A good start

Then onto speed.  

These are ranked as AGP 2x, 4x and 8x.  The motherboard has upto and including AGP 4x support, and all the cards I can find generally run at 4x or 8x.  The 8x cards should happily work with the lower speeds, you will just not get the performance the card is 'fully' capable of.

So an AGP card into an AGP slot - should be fine.  Please check your motherboard first though to make sure the AGP slot is there and be sure you are happy with my findings.

Hopefully this is enough to make the correct choice.

Joe_Bloggs

@overwhelmed
That is an old motherboard, I know I have one and am using it for this message. Are you sure you want to be spending any money on this system? The card you want would be a bottleneck in a newer system.
What card would you be replacing ? It is your money, your PC and your choice.
J_B. (Been there, done that, wasted my money)

Godders

A very good point J_B, I just scanned the specs of each and addressed the question of 'would it work?'

Overwhelmed.

If you post your desired effect and your current specs - you may find something else suggested (eg a memory upgrade) that may be more suitable.

overwhelmed_2

Hi Joe_Bloggs and Godders, and thanks for your thoughts so far.
What I have at present is a 3-year old system - 1GHz Athlon AMD on the aforementioned Asus A7V133 motherboard, 256 Kb PC133 SDRAM, with 32 Mb Nvidia Geforce 2 MX SDR graphics card. It runs Windows 98SE.
We don't need much more, to be honest, except that my daughter wants to run SIMS2 and a couple of other games, that it won't quite handle, or runs really slowly with.
I had thought to perhaps upgrade the cpu to AMD XP2000 (this is apparently compatible with the motherboard), increase the memory to 512, and get a slightly better graphics card. I know I could get a faster new system by spending a bit more, but I'd prefer to stick with Windows 98 while I still can. (The machine is networked to two others, also on 98, and I don't really want to have to spend out on 3 new operating systems.).
I've done the easy upgrading things already - memory, hard disks and so on - and just wondered if I go a few steps further, and could get a couple more years out of the old crate before it finally pegs out!
I'd be grateful for any thoughts.

Joe_Bloggs

The Sims2 must be responsible for a lot of upgrade headaches amongst parents who thought it was just another PC game.
With three PCs to look afrer you must have considerable experience in maintaining them. Hopefully you will be able to re-use the bits from one machine in another should you choose to upgrade a PC with a new motherboard, ram and processor.
Don't worry too much about different operating systems networking with each other. It should work in theory and you can always make a new system dual boot with win98.

A few years for the A7V is unrealistic given the hardware demands of current and future games software. It's ok for browsing the web and writing reports however.

I recommend reflection and contemplation as to how your PCs and their network will evolve against the ever increasing demands from all sides.
J_B.