update on vid card situation

[honor man]

ok, so on black friday i went to best buy with my brother to get some stuff while they had those crazy sales, and while we're in there we saw a ati radeon x700 pro they were selling for 100 bucks. so i convinced my brother to get it for his gateway which is like a 3.2ghz p4 but only came with a 64mb vid card. the guy at BB said something about there are two types of formats or somethign that all cards are either one or the other, and since we didnt know what "type" the gateway was, we figured it was a 50/50 chance of it working on his comp. so he found out his comp wasnt compatible with it some way or another when he went back to school 100 miles from here. sorry i dont know exactly what the guy at BB said, but how do i find out if that card is compatible with my system in whatever context the guy meant? i have a geforce 3 64mb now, so it would be cool to get that ati in there to have better gameplay until i build my new comp next year or so, as long as it doesnt cause any compatiblity issues with games i like to play or anything.

my specs are : 1.7 ghz p4
512 ram
geforce 3 64mb

 

[The Kraut]

The x700 pros are PCIx16 i believe. Is either your or brothers computers PCIx16 or AGP. I believe your card is either PCI or AGP, that being said the x700 will not work with yours. Either upgrade your mobo or buy a different graphics card.

 

[beedubaya]

If its GeForce 3, more than likely it is AGP. 6600GT and 6800GS are two very good AGP choices right now.

 

[honor man]

i dont know what any of this crap means. teach me.

 

[Riceball]

When looking to buy a graphics card, there are 3 formats, which basically means that a graphics card will fit in your machine if the type matches with the slot in your motherboard. PCI-E, AGP, and PCI are the three types. Video card companies are phasing out of AGP and using PCI-E because you can SLI them, which means put 2 video cards into one system. AGP is still a good format though, and you won't see performance differences between AGP and PCI-E. PCI slots come in all computers but don't have anywhere near the bandwidth that PCI-E or AGP do, so therefore PCI cards are not good at all.

 

[rkf76]

i dont know what any of this crap means. teach me.

PCIe

AGP

PCI

In the pic above, the 3 white slots on the left are the PCI slots, the brown slot just to the right of the 3rd PCI slot is the AGP slot

In the pic above, see the horizontal yellow slots? Starting nearest the middle of the board, the top 4 slots are PCIe, the bottom 2 are PCI slots.