Graphics Card Question.

So I've never purchased one before, I'm looking for an upgrade to my built in one but I don't know what kind I can run/should run and was looking for advice.

First off, my current card specs

Ge Force 6150SE nForce 430 GPU MCP 61 P

Device ID 10DE-03D0

Revision A3

Subvendor Acer Incorporated [ALI] (1025)

Current Performance Level Level 1

Current GPU Clock 425 M Hz

Current Memory Clock 100 M Hz

Direct X Support 9.0c

Direct X Shader Model 3.0

Open GL Support 2.0

Bus Interface FPCI

Force Ware version 191.25

BIOS Version 5.61.32.30.00

RO Ps 2

Shaders Vertex 2/Pixel 2

Memory Type System

Physical Memory 256 MB

Virtual Memory 1408 MB

Count of performance levels : 1 Level 0 GPU Clock 425 M Hz Memory Clock 100 M Hz

next up, motherboard specs.

Motherboard

Manufacturer Acer

Model Aspire X1400

Chipset Vendor NVIDIA

Chipset Model MCP 61

Chipset Revision A3

Southbridge Vendor NVIDIA

Southbridge Model MCP 61

Southbridge Revision A2

System Temperature 33 °C

BIOS

Brand American Megatrends, Inc.

Version P01-A2

Date 03/30/2010

Voltage

• 5V 5.145 V

CPU CORE 2.232 V

VIN 3 1.680 V

VIN 4 0.948 V

• 3.3V 1.529 V

VIN 6 2.592 V

VIN 7 1.668 V

VIN 8 1.608 V

PCI Data

1. PCI Available

2. PCI Available

so from what I understand I can get 2 PCI slot video cards?

From what I can tell, Acer apparently offered the Radeon HD 5450 with the system, so that could work, but I can't promise it. I would look inside and make sure you actually have a PCI-Express slot open. I would not recommend SLI for you, as you seem to have a fairly old system, and some of the Nforce 4's did not actually support SLI. Plus it can cause issues with some programs, which may be an issue for you. There's also the issue of suppling power, even if you have the connectors, the PSU may not support the level needed.

Tom's Hardware has this Comparison chart so you can see how a given chipset will roughly stand with others, but I wouldn't recommend spending more than 80$US in your case, and really, cheaper is a better investment for your case.

The more money you'd want to spend the more you'd want to replace the whole thing.

Also, PCI and PCI Express are not the same things, though they do look a lot alike, you can usually tell a difference by looking at them.

edited 24th Apr '11 10:12:50 AM by blueharp

thanks for that info, when you say they look different what would set the two apart?

EDIT: After a bit of digging I can across this on newegg and was wondering if I could/should run it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161322&cm_re=Radeon_HD_5450-_-14-161-322-_-Product

edited 24th Apr '11 10:32:15 AM by thatguythere47

Here's a page with graphics for them.

I don't know whether that card will fit, or whether it's a good price, but it is way above what you probably have now.

PCI-Express IS supposed to negotiate down-grading though, so even if you only have PCI-Express 1, other cards should fit.

Here's the specs page for it, Here's a photo of the front. Judging from the specs page's nebulous “I/O expansion: PCI Express® x1 slot, PCI™ slot” description, that sounds like one PCI-Express single-lane slot, and one legacy (pre-AGP) 32-bit 33 Mhz PCI slot.

So in other words, no SLI, and you're only going to get the throughput of an AGP 1x slot. You won't get much if any of a speed boost, but you will get DX11 support and more processing power behind the x1 bottleneck. That said, I think it will work, as it's pretty common to have an electrically x1 x16 slot (that is, the physical connector is x16, but only the first lane of pins are actually wired.) If you've actually got a physical x1 slot, you'll need an x1 card.

If it can take an x16 card, get that instead, as you'll be able to get better use out of it in your next computer too.

I wouldn't trust the specs page all that much, Acer hasn't put much effort into that department in the past and I highly doubt they'd sell a system designed to be used with a dedicated gpu with a x1 slot. x8 fine, maybe but not x1. Technical information about the board in that system are vague as hell on the web.

Simplest solution: Open up the side panel and take a look at the board. Compare the slots to this graphic◊.

What card you should get depends on your available budged, a 5450 however is pretty much money thrown out the window.

Any money put into this system is likely money thrown away unless you can re-purpose all of it later.