Upgrading Graphics Cards

[dave068]

I am considering up-grading my Radeon X1550 as the newer games on the market are causing 'jerky movements' during play. I was thinking about a 512 mb card but I see my installed card is 'up to 896 mb'. Does any-one know what this means?

[VHG]

Not an expert on graphics cards, but I THINK it means it uses a combination of memory on the graphics card AND some of your REAL memory (RAM) to get up to 896Mb.

So it may be the graphics card has say 256 on it, but you can define the rest from your real memory.

Not sure how or where you actually specify that though.

[dave068]

Thanks VHG. I think I've got the gist of that. Maplins, here I come!

[VHG]

Not sure Maplins is the best plae to buy a graphics card.

[ACtheTROLL]

vhg is hiding his light
he's right on all counts

I have a couple of favourite sellers - shopbt, oyyy and eclipse (pretty standard) - but google is your friend - use it

http://www.google.co.uk/products?hl=en&q=radeo n%20graphics%20card&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wf

it's impossible to say which without knowing your budget
the development path is about every 6 months - so they are always out of date

look in a couple of mags

[ACtheTROLL]

and don't forget - minimum specs quoted on most software are pretty grim - it will run with them - but only on the lowest settings ... and also jerkily your processor is as important as the graphics card - as is the latest drivers and directx

and a decent amount of error free defragged discspace

[dave068]

Thanks to you all for the info. Maybe I'll pass Maplins, and I'll surely pass by PC World!

[DanAB]

buying the graphics card will depend on your motherboard these days.

currently, the generation of PCI-E is 2.0 which has double the bandwidth of PCI-E x16. most of the newer cards are 2.0, but are backwards compatible with x16. but to do this they are not performing at their peak, which means wasting money.

as a rule of thumb, if your PC is older than18 months then the current generation of grapic cards are too powerful.

my suggestion of a graphics card will be an ATI 3000 series or a nVidia 8000 series (maybe 9000 series).

[dave068]

Blimey chaps, this is getting mind-blowing! Didn't have this trouble with my Playstation 1!!