Windows 7 Graphics Card Question

[misterslick]

I'm probably gonna need a new graphics/video card (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700LE) soon. My motherboard is a GA-7DXR with an AMD chip. I'm pretty sure the graphics card is a DirectX 9. I was advised to get a DirectX 11 in regards to another issue that I had that has been resolved. When I shop for a new card, how will I know if it will work with my mobo or not? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

mark

 

[bobkn]

I see that your graphics slot is AGP Pro 1.5V.

Most new cards these days are PCI-Express, which is incompatible with both AGP and PCI.

You may have a little trouble finding a DX11 card because, as far as I know, none are on the market yet. I'm not sure when the ATI 58xx series will be on the market, but it may not be until Win7 GA (22 October). (Only Win7 supports DX11.)

I'm not familiar with AGP Pro, but apparently it is compatible with regular AGP cards. (The AGP Pro slot is longer than regular AGP, so AGP Pro cards can't fit in regular AGP slots.)

I suggest that you visit www.newegg.com, whether you are able (or willing) to do business with them or not. Go to the desktop video card area, and go into the power search. Check the AGP and AGP Pro interfaces, and the DirectX 10 and 10.1 boxes. (DirectX 9.0c would serve for Win7, but Newegg doesn't provide that level of detail. Apparently some of the older DirectX 9 cards don't support the shaders needed to run Aero Glass.) You'll get a variety of ATI (AMD) cards. The most up-to-date AGP cards use the HD4670 chip. Looks like you may need a spare Molex connector to provide additional power to the card.

I have the impression that getting the ATI Catalyst drivers to play nice with AGP cards may be more trouble than with PCI-E cards

 

[Highwayman]

PCIE v.3 video cards are only 6 months away it would be prudent to wait till then unless your desparate, also worth mentioning theres no just motherboard to consider when going with pcie, you'll need new everything....ram, cpu, power supply, the works....

...with AGP your looking at the Gigabyte GV-R465D2-1GI Radeon HD 4650 1GB at around £65 currently (compared to PCIE edition at around £55) which performance wise is around the pcie Nvidia 8500 series, although a gig of onboard ram certainly gives it some muscles to flex. If you want to go Nvidia on AGP then the best option is the 7900GTX but it's way to expensive for what it now offers and it's not even dx10.
GV R465D2-1GI Gigabyte GV-R465D2-1GI Radeon HD 4650 1GB ATX HDMI Graphics Card

-Powered by Radeon HD 4650 GPU
-Supports AGP 8X
-Microsoft DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.1 suppor
-Integrated with the industry's best 1GB GDDR2 memory and 128-bit memory interface
-Supports CrossFireX™ and Avivo™HD technology
-Features Dual-Link DVI-I / D-sub / HDMI