Need Advice for buying a new graphics card

Pro Member First Officer
Steve (SpiderWings) First Officer

wrote this in the General FS2004 Forum and decided I should put it here as well.

I am still lacking a graphics card... burned up my old NVIDIA eGeForce FX5500 the first of November. At first I thought it was just a problem with the driver but after pulling it out for testing I realized it had some fried components on the board.

That card served me well for two years and would probably still be working today if I'd watched how many graphics I had open and running before attempting to show my son a movie from my digital camera, which ended up in an endless loop of less than a second and I couldn't shut the system down without turning the power off.

So now I'm hoping you guys can give me some advice on what I might be able to replace that with for my system.

Compaq Presario S6220WM
Prod # DT057A-ABA

MS Windows XP Home SP3
Intel Celeron CPU 2.80GHz
2.0GB RAM
Intel 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller

I saw two at Walmart and that seems to be the extent of what is in our town... small town.

NVIDEA GeForce 6200 PCI

Radeon 2400 PCI Express with HDMI Output

I can't afford more than about $150-$200 and these are both in that range.

Any recommendations?

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Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

PCI and PCI express take two different motherboards.
See which you have, the PCI Express is much better.

Radar

Pro Member First Officer
Steve (SpiderWings) First Officer

Would it be proper to assume since my old graphics card just says PCI on it and it worked for several years that I've got a PCI slot on the motherboard rather than a PCI express?

Is there a software of checking what the slot is or do I need to get inside the computer. And how would I know.... guess I'll do some reading up on that also.

Thanks RM

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

Yes, if it's an older machine it's probably a PCI not a PCIe.
This will have links to all three gifs of motherboards and the different slots.

http://www.flightsimulationforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1054&highlight=pci

You can always buy on line if the ones in the local stores aren't the best.

Radar

Pro Member First Officer
Steve (SpiderWings) First Officer

Yeah my computer was purchased in early 2004 and PCIe was introduced in 2004 so I'm fairly sure mine is just PCI. I'm trying to figure out what my power supply unit's rating is but not finding it with software. Anyone know if you can find this information without removing the PC's cover?

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

I can't see it being this low, maybe 350w.

http://twopoint.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=2289019

Radar

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