Which Graphics Card for Lomita 010116 Motherboard?

[alba1314]

I have an E-Machines DVD150 with Lomita 010116 Mobo , which Belongs to my sons and need to upgrade their graphics card from onboard graphics to allow them to play some games they have recently bought and require the upgrade.

However, I am at a loss as to exactly what type of card I need - AGP or PCI? I know that I am looking for around 256Mb memeory on the card. Can anyone please advise?

Thanks in advance...

 

[Igorian]

Nice cheap and nasty motherboard made in Korea by Trigem. Open the case and have a look at the available slots. The white ones are PCI and there might be a single brown one, which will be the AGP slot. You could of course contact emachines for more information.

However, I probably see more dead emachines than any other brand, so you might want to consider replacing it completely. Adding an AGP/PCI graphic card will put additional strain on the measly PSU they provide and when it goes, it's likely to take the motherboard and processor with it. If you are serious about upgrading it, upgrade the PSU too. To be honest though a new PC would be your best bet. (IMHO)

 

[Softus]

Given the age of those PCs, I would expect it to be PCI, but please click here.

 

[alba1314]

Having cracked the case of the PC, it would appear to be a PCI card that is needed. Thanks to both Igorian and Softus for their recommendations.

However, one thing I should add is that this DVD150 machine has run extremely safely since it was purchased some four years or so ago and has not given me any problems at all, where my own PC has had to be rebuilt in that time and had a number of formats and re-installing of XP in the same time!

It's had an upgrade in that time of a new CD-RW drive and just a few days ago, this was replaced by a brand new DVDRW+/- drive and seems to be having no adverse reactions to these upgrades.

That being the case, I will take onboard the advice about also upgrading the PSU when I install new graphics card - purely as a precautionary measure - but cannot see any real reason for dumping a PC that is in fine fettle and going strong where others have fallen by the wayside.

The old saying of throwing the kids out with the bathwater may seem presumptuous, but I reckon there's still a whole heap of life left in this DVD150 yet!

 

[OllieN]

Given the age of those PCs, I would expect it to be PCI, but please click here.

Am I being dense or is that website trying to get people to part with cash to buy a graphics card upgrade without even mentioning the GPU chipset? Seems to be not enough information to make me want to part with £75 (Not that I'm suggesting that was what you were advising Softus).

 

[Softus]

Am I being dense or is that website trying to get people to part with cash to buy a graphics card upgrade without even mentioning the GPU chipset?

I don't think there's any mystery - the web page says both "PCI" and "3d NVidia GeForce" in the 2nd paragraph of text after the bullet points.

Seems to be not enough information to make me want to part with £75 (Not that I'm suggesting that was what you were advising Softus).

Correct (in that I wasn't suggesting you buy anything from them), but I thought the technical information would be useful to you.

 

[OllieN]

Am I being dense or is that website trying to get people to part with cash to buy a graphics card upgrade without even mentioning the GPU chipset?

I don't think there's any mystery - the web page says both "PCI" and "3d NVidia GeForce" in the 2nd paragraph of text after the bullet points.

Yes but for that price point you gould be getting anywhere from an overpriced 8500GT up to an underpriced 8600GT.

What kind of games do you want to play OP? If its the latest 3D games or similar then you should be looking to make sure that whatever graphics card you buy supports at least the relevant versions of directX and Pixel Shader. Don't always believe the minimum specs on the side of the box as they are the minimum specs for the game to run rather than be playable. As Igorian says a full upgrade may be advisable. I have mistakenly in the past ploughed money into better graphics cards and RAM in order to try and play the latest games when a new system would have been more cost effective at the time

If you have a specific game in mind try here http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest
which will compare your PC specs against the minimum and reccommended specs for quite a few games.

 

[Deluks]

Yeh don't be a tightwad Don't make your son have to play the latest games at their lowest settings, they won't look like anything like the pictures on the back of the box, and he'll resent you for it for the rest of your life

When I got my first Commodore 64 I was really disappointed that Outrun didn't look as good as it did in the arcades.
Even the picture on the back of the box was for the Amiga version

 

[Softus]

I don't think there's any mystery - the web page says both "PCI" and "3d NVidia GeForce" in the 2nd paragraph of text after the bullet points.

Yes but for that price point you gould be getting anywhere from an overpriced 8500GT up to an underpriced 8600GT.

FFS. If it's that important to you then phone them up and ask them. Or, if your forearms aren't up to that, then you could Email them.