PCI graphics cards question

[GTOman]

What I want to know is what determines the speed of a PCI graphics card?Is it the amount of memory(64mb,256mb),or is it something else?I"m getting a new video card.I"m going with the BFG Technologies geforcefx 5200 256mb ddr pci graphics card. I"m currently running a PNY Verto geforce4 mx 420 64mb PCI card.I"m looking for faster and better graphics performance.Will I get it with this PCI card?I have no AGP slots,so I must use PCI.Dont know if this matters but my specs are4 2.4ghz,1gb ddr 2100 ram,80 gig hdd, ac97 onboard sound,win xp home with sp1 installed.I get ok performance with my verto,but with my specs I think I should be getting better game performance despite the PCI bottleneck.Thanks for any info.

[JasonL]

PCI works on a 32-bit bus. AGP runs on a 64-bit bus. AGP has much more bandwidth and speed than does PCI. Also, your graphics card has its own graphics processing unit (GPU( on the card. The newer cards this processor runs at a high rate (I think 650mhz for geforce 4 TI4600) When purchasing a new card be sure to check the GPU speed, how many triangles per second it can do, and the amount of on board RAM. The speed of the RAM on the cad affects performance as well. Remember more memory is always better!

[jombo]

jason said it all. more ram on the card generally the better. the agp verson of the geforcefx 5200 card is very good. i myself have 1 in my gaming computer. as jason said agp is much better but im sure you will see lots of dif if you upgrade to it from the 64 meg card you have.

also i see you are using onboard sound. gaming is much better with a sound card. and it will affect performance to a certain degree. a cheap sound blaster live is also recomended.