Name that slot...

[ffutures]

My brother-in-law gave me a copy of Doom 3 for Xmas, but it doesn't want to work, presumably because my PC uses the motherboard graphics which don't have hardware acceleration etc. I'd rather like to play it, but I'm not 100% sure what graphics cards will be suitable for this machine. It has two empty PCI slots, plus another (the brown one circled in this picture) which I think is AGP. Can anyone verify this, and make any suggestions as to a suitable (and preferably cheap) card?

Comments

[booster17.livejournal.com]

Ran this past my tech support guy who happened to be around, and he says:

That is indeed an AGP slot. Any motherboard with that will be able to use a Radion 9200SE with 128MB ram (AGP 4x). For example item number 55275 on www.ebuyer.co.uk costs £23.12 plus VAT. That card will run Doom 3 in medium quality well enough.

If it is the motherboard I think it is (hard to be absolutely sure from the photo) it should be able be able to run an AGP 8x card such as the Radion 9550 256MB (ebuyer item 62209 cost £46.28 plus VAT. That card will support Doom 3 in high quality).

If you want the very best quality graphics be prepared to spend about £250 on a graphics card and about a grand on a new PC to go round it! Hope this helps. Let me know the type of motherboard if you want more info.

P.S. PLEASE DUST THE FAN IN YOUR MACHINE :)

Yes, he's a sarcastic git.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

£23.12 sounds about what I want to spend, I think. Don't mind medium res, I have medium res eyes...

As for the fan, it gets hoovered about once a month - this room's pretty dusty because of all the books.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Later: Can't find the motherboard manual - is there any easy way to detect which specification it is?

Get the motherboard details ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... usually written somewhere on the motherboard and ...

... JGI (just google it!) as there are numerous sites out there that will tell you what the motherboard has on it.

Re: Get the motherboard details ...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Okay, tried the wrong number a couple of times but eventually discovered it's an AM37, which apparently means x4 AGP.

Thanks, I now know what card to order.

Excellent!

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Sorry I couldn't tell you to run some free software to tell you that, but I'm glad you found the info you needed.

Have fun!

[mr-wombat.livejournal.com]

in that case just ignore everything I said below :)