Upgrade Graphics/Video Card?

I wish to upgrade the graphics memory on two PC's, Firstly an Ei System 5002 - On Board SiS651, what sort of graphics card can I purchase that would be compatible with this computer? It currently has a 32mb integrated graphics which needs urgent updating.



Secondly I have a Dell Optiplex GX270 that I would like to update the graphics on, which graphics card would I need to purchase for this computer?



Any help would be greatly appreciated as I haven't got a clue on what to look for, stupidly I bought some 1GB of graphics memory not knowing if it would be compatible so would like not to make the same mistake.



Thanks.|||hi mate

as the other answers have noted the ei-system 5002 supports a agp x8 bus which means you cannot use any of the more powerful cards such as the geforce 9600gt and 9800gt however saying that there are some excellent agp card avalible at some decent prices

we shall begin at the top and currently the fastest and best agp card there is the "ati radeon HD3850"( http://www1.sapphiretech.com/us/products…

i have this in one of my systems and its a awesome peice of kit that will run all the latest games including crysis and bioshock

its specifications are decent aswell which include a 668mhz core clock and 512mb of gddr3 memory running at 828mhz(1686mhz ddr effective) and when you add on the sizable 256bit memory interface and the resulting 52.9gb/sec memory bandwidth you have a card thats as fast and in some cases faster than some of the pci-express cards around

however power comes at a price and the radeon HD3850 is around £95 online but its money well spent,and will allow you to continue to use your agp based pc for a good few months to come

allthough ati have released several cards supporting direct x 10 nvidia have not released any which is a shame however another agp card i have owned thats pretty fast is the "geforce 7900gs"( http://www.pcupgrade.co.uk/productdetail…

this is a excellent card and has some nifty specs including a 450mhz core clock and 256mb of gddr3 memory clocked at 1320mhz,it also has a 256bit memory interface and a memory bandwidth of 42gb/sec

however the geforce 7900gs is a excellent card if you like overclocking,using nvidia,s coolbits registry fix i was able to get the card running at 538mhz core clock speed and the memory to 1480mhz,which resulted in a 5gb/sec improvement in memory bandwidth,not bad for free

and i was also suprised to see the gpu temperture had not increased at all,so i could of probally squeezed the memory clock to 1500mhz if i wanted to

the geforce 7900gs is well worth considering however it comes with a massive price tag(approx £150) but you can find it cheaper if you look around

finally another brilliant agp card is the radeon x1950 pro,this was once the king of the hill and this was mainly down to its 36 pixel pipelines and excellent core and memory speeds,however its been thin on the ground of late and when you can find it expect to pay in excess of £90 for it,however its money well spent

theres one at http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Component… its currently out of stock but is due back in around the end of the month

its specs include a 575mhz core clock and 512mb of gddr3 memory rated at 1380mhz ddr effective,but its the 36 pixel piplines than make this card,its just a pitty that these programmable pipelines have now been replaced by stream processors,however the x1950 pro is still a formidable card and is well worth considering

there are some other budget priced agp cards such as the radeon x1650pro(£32) and the geforce 7600gt(£60) however as with all agp cards they are difficult to find

so there you have it,agp cards are still around however due to their arcitecture they are more expensive to manufactuer so this is why they seem more expensive than their pci-express counterparts

i hope this helps,any problems let me know

good luck mate !|||A quick look at the specs for the Dell confirms that it uses an AGP type slot. There are other problems however. There are several different types of case some are SFF small form factor and may only be designed to take a "slimmed down" or "half height card". Without knowing which case you have we cannot advise further. AGP card are old technology and half height AGP cards are virtually non-existent nowadays.

More importantly you need to be carefull of the power requirements. These Dells really only have a power supply built for the standard config and little else. If you go putting in a more powerfull card you may find you need a more powerfull PSU. Dell PSUs can be proprietry esepcially for SFF cases so standard PSUs may not fit.

The same general principles will apply to your other PC - check it uses a standard height card and that the PSU is adequate - 300W should be sufficient for a mid ranking graphics card. Upgrading these older PCs often is not economic I'm afraid|||Your Ei system would use an AGP graphics card.



Your Dell would use a PCI-e graphics card.



You can't buy "graphics memory", so obviously you bought system RAM instead. Return it.