Upgrading the processor.

[SmokyDesperado]

Since that’s done, I think I’ll be looking at upgrading graphics card. My K8 Combo-Z motherboard has an AGP slot and supports 1.5V, 8X / 4X AGP card. Currently I have an ATI Radeon 9200 SE Family 128 MB which is rubbish and want something that’s mid-range for graphics, price roughly between 30 to 50 pounds any suggestions?

Thanks for your help.

[SmokyDesperado]

Oh yeah in the manual it says do not use a 3.3V AGP card as this may cause permanent damage.

Another thing about the GPU's i want to know is that will DDR2 graphic cards work on my motherboard?

[Generator]

have a check for a nivida agp 8x geforece 6600 gt, thats a good midrange card, up to 500 mhz clock speed, and ddr3 ram. its ok , agp 4/8x are 1.5 v and the ddr3 memory on the card is fine for your motherboard. i prefer nvidia cards, there drivers are good and never seem to have a problem like ati drivers. a 6600 gt agp 8x 256 ram nvidia card you can get for about £50 if you check around. ATI Radeon 9200 SE what you have is ver weak, also. i think it shares system memory. the nvidia 6600/ 6600 Gt card have dedicated memory.

[Generator]

if your playing games, a nvidia 6600 gt will handle swat 4 call of duty 2 and 3 soldier of fortune 2 and 3, sniper elite, Far cry, Doom 3 S.T.A.L.K.E.R tom clancys rainbow 6 vegas. medal of honour allied assault etc as 30 fps with smooth graphics, i played all these and more on a 6600 gt, i only upgraded to a 8800 gts as i have crysis game and call of duty 4 as they need a fast card and plenty of ram,

[Generator]

also forgot, now you have a dual core, get the AMD Dual-Core Optimizer
it helps if your playing games. heres the link http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/...1_9706,00.html

[SmokyDesperado]

i've been looking around and can't seem to find the 6600 gt anywhere but i've come across ATI radeon X1650 Pro which seems to look ok for the price is it any good or is the 6600 gt better?

[Generator]

yes its much better the the nvidia, 512 mb ram onboard dedicated and 12 pipelines instead of 8 on the nvidia ,though it uses DDR2 memory its a good mid range card that will handle good graphics and games. heres a link to one to read specs ,if your happy with a ati thats fine , for the price its a good deal http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/...&sourceid=2024, if you can find it cheaper than this go for it.

[Generator]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...pricegr abber heres another link, which is even cheaper.

[SmokyDesperado]

ok i've decided to go for X1650 pro 512 MB, to install this its just taking the old card out of the slot and putting this new one in, theres no update thing i have to do?

[Generator]

should be ok as you had a radeon before, there the same drivers, but check there website for the latest drivers for your new card. thts it there nothing else to upgrade.

[SmokyDesperado]

ok i've installed the graphics card. I had a little problem, the cd that came with it wasnt installing the driver and kept on getting blue screen of death on startup so had to do sytem restore then tried again still didnt install and decided to do window update and that worked, it is now working fine.

Do i have to have the ATI catalyst control centre running for the card to work or can i remove it from running as it takes a big chunk of memory and slows the system startup?

[Generator]

yeah you can remove this from your startup, if you go to run and type msconfig click ok, then in the startup tab(last one just untick it. i think it will be CLIStart.exe. to disable the cat control centre from your taskbar. open the ATI Catalyst Control Center, click on the Preferences button and untick the Enable System Tray Menu item. You should also go to Start/All Programs/Startup and delete any ATI entries there. the cat control centre not required for your drivers of graphics to funciton, its just to changed setting. so removing it is ok.

[Generator]

if however you wanted to use in the future, just untick from start up and change prefs in the sys tray menu to disable. then if you want to enable it later you can. like all my apps win live messinger nvidia control yahoo messinger and any apps i install, i never add to system try at startup only add a shortcut to desktop, that way i can choose to start them manually, so there not wasting time when i turn on my pc to load. your find if you tweak your startup and untick apps you dont want to load at startup you can save 15 seconds or more. all i have in sys tray is avg and avg antispyware, and my pc takes 25 seconds to start , i even removed the windows splash screen logo. as that uses about 10 seconds.