Want to get a vid card....help I'm lost???

[printer88]

Hi,
First of all ....this site is awesome! And It's my first post.

I have a Compaq Presario Model# 5BW131
667 mhz
512 sdram
XP pro OS
cd/dvd burner

I would like to acquire a vid card but I know nothing about compatibility.
I got some EA sports basketball and football games for Christmas and they installed fine. But when I try to play them nothing happens. Also like to play Delta Force but when I try I get this message:

Intel(R) 82810E Graphics Controller:

This video card does not support HW T&L (Hardware accelerated Transform & Lighting).
This game requires a video card that supports HW T&L, and therefore will not run on this device

Could you all help me out. I don't have much cash to shell out this close to Christmas. Any ideas would be great. If you all could just shed some light on what will work and what will not that would be great!
I saw this at K-Mart : AGP 8x Volari V8 256MB Video Card with VGA, TV-Out and DVI ports Will it work?
As you can see I am LOST.....help!!!!!

Tommy ( John 3:3) Jesus Saves!!!

[Erik]

I can't seem to find anything on that particualr model. The most important thing that would need to be considered for compatability would be the number and types of free expansion slots available to you.

That card you are looking at needs an AGP slot, does your PC have one? The easiest way to tell would be just opening the case and looking. You can have at most one AGP slot, and it is the first one closest to the top of the system. It will be easy to spot because it is brown and offset from the PCI slots lengthwise. If not do you have a free PCI slot you can use? They will be white and a decent expansion minded system will have a few of them.

Also as the current system is using a built in video card you need to check to see if it can be disabled to allow the new video card to work. To do this check in BIOS for some option dealing with onboard peripherals. There should be some option to enable/disable the video. To get into BIOS you will need to press a key while the computer is booting well before the Windows splash screen, usually Del or one of the function keys. Look for a prompt on the screen.

[printer88]

Well I just looked inside and there is no AGP slot. There is however 2 open PCI slots.
Tommy

[jmkeuning]

I would recommend Saph's sticky at the top of this forum but there are no PCI cards in there.

So I recommend going to Newegg.com, go to:

Computer Hardware > Video Cards & Related Devices > Video Cards

Select PCI in the "Interface" drop down. Sorting the results by "Best Rating" gives you many well-reviewed cards in the $50-$80 range.

Be aware, however, that the reviewers' success with these cards and gaming will be mixed. Some will have success, others will hate them. That being said, this is what you are limited to given your expansion capabilities so pick your price range and take your chances!

[saphalline]

Oh you poor thing! You have the i810 chipset! :( I feel your pain...

The i810 series of chipsets didn't have AGP. They were meant for value systems, but the problem is that these chipsets are worse than value, they just plain suck! And the onboard video is a very real problem for them. There's actually a defect in the onboard video adapter related to an incompatibility with the basic BIOS subsystem. But that's a whole other story.

Ok so PCI only. That's a real bummer, but hey, you have modest needs so this shouldn't be a big problem. I guess my first suggestion would be a PCI version of a GeForce FX 5200. Doesn't really matter which version, anything would be better than that stupid i810 onboard video. Besides that, you could go for a GeForce MX4000, again it doesn't matter which version. Or a Radeon 9200/9250, or a Radeon 9600, etc.

You can find much better prices online vs in a store, like this eVGA GeForce MX4000 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130186) for less than $50 including shipping, or this VisionTek Radeon 9250 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814129046) for $60 including shipping. You won't find a decent vid card in a store like Best Buy for that kind of price! ;)

[printer88]

Saph you are a genius. I went to Circuit City and bought the GeForce MX4000.
It was $59.99 with a $10.00 mail in rebate, so $49.99 plus tax total. Got it installed. It took me awhile to figure out the setup. I kept getting a black screen instead of windows. This was even after disabling onboard graphics in BIOS. The problem was that I did'nt know I had to switch the setting in the display menu from onboard to new card. It took me a couple hours to trial and error the thing. I had to keep changing the plug on back of the PC from pci to old spot(literally 10 times). The EVGA hotline was down for New Years. But I guess I did okay for someone who has only ever added ram and changed a drive.
But i'll tell you for sure If I had'nt found this site it would never have happened.
BTW I can play the games I got for Christmas now and DvD's play much much smoother. God Bless and Happy New Year.
Tommy

[saphalline]

Ooh ouch! Sorry you had so many problems installing that thing. I should have mentioned that you might need to go into the BIOS and change the "Init Display First" or whatever it was in the BIOS.

Glad it's working now, though. And yeah, I bet it's much better than before! ;) :D

You know, an off-shoot of having a dedicated vid card is that your system as a whole will perform better. No sharing main system RAM with the vid adapter (now your vid card has its own RAM) and that means you have 8-11MB more RAM for your system. It also means that your total RAM bandwidth now goes completely to the CPU, instead of sharing it between the CPU and onboard video. Good stuff, I always like dedicated vid cards.