Upgrade Question

S

Smudger16

Geek Trainee
Hi All,
I am new to Hardwareforums so please bear with me.
Question: I have decided to upgrade my PC myself as an exercise in my own ability as I have not tried anything like this before. It has a Gigabyte GA-7VTX motherboard which, according to its spec, has 5 PCI slots. It also has 1 AGP Pro slot. 4 of the PCI slots are in use by various cards including my NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400 Graphics card. As I need 2 PCI card slots to do my upgrade (1 wireless, 1 ethernet) can anyone tell me if I can move this graphics card to the AGP Pro slot and are there any actions I have to take when I do it. I have read elsewhere that I can make the change and that it just means that the additional pin slots aren't used. Could anyone please confirm this for me.

Hope this makes sense. As I said this is my first time at upgrading and if this goes successfully I will probably attempt a new build next time.

Cheers.
 
Is your graphics card PCI? if so, you cant move it to an AGP slot, PCI is a compleatly different interface to AGP, AGP stands for Accelerated graphics port, and is just for graphics cards, PCI graphics cards are too slow to play modern games, i dont know if you want to play games.

What are you wanting to upgrade?

what is your full PC specs, eg, cpu, power supply (make and model), hdd'(s), ram(type eg pc3200, ddr 400), amount of ram, sound card etc...

either put all your pc specs in your signature, or in my computer (Located on dark blue nav bar at top of page)
 
Hi Willz,

Thanks for the reply. I have posted my PC details on My Computer. Yes my graphics card is PCI and I have just re-read the info on Sysopt.com and find I misread it. They were referring to using an AGP card in an AGP Pro slot. So it looks like a replacement graphics card AGP or Pro if I want the spare PCI slot.
I am upgrading my processor from a AMD Athlon XP 1500+ to 2400+ for a little more speed. Being a Socket A (133mhtz) board that's the highest I can go on my budget. I also want to add a wireless PCI card and an ethernet PCI card for home networking, the PC being the initial computer in the network and they recommend a hardwire connection for that.
The PC was custom built about 4 years ago to what was then a decent spec for video editing which is the main use plus normal office and e-mail etc. No gaming.

Any suggestions for a graphics card or any other advice will be gratefully received.

Cheers, Smudger


Edit: Just a belated thpought - I am going onto Broadband. Can I remove the data/fax/voice modem PCI card with no ill effect. That will make room for the other PCI card I want - won't it???
 
errm, i think you should be able to remove the modem from the pci slot and not cause any problems when installing broadband, infact i found it better to remove it, but that was with AOL lol

i would suggest buying a graphics card thats going to last you a while, maybe somthing from the ATI X700 or nvidia 6600 range of cards, i would suggest going with the 6600GT, its good for games, will last quite a while, so if you ever decided to start gaming, that card should be fine.

video editing requires lots of cpu power and uses alot of ram, so if your going to be doing lots of video editing, even with an xp 2400, your proberbly going to struggle still :\, but its unlucky that your on a tight budget, i would also suggest upgrading to 1GB of ram aswell, if you decided to do this, buy a stick of ram that is prefrebly the same as the stick of ram you have allready got.
 
Thanks Willz,
That info will do me fine for the time being. I am with AOL also and am upgrading to their broadband so I will remove the modem when I delve into the case.


Thanks again

Smudger
 
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