How to upgrade Graphics Card .... Please help

[cooolcaat]

I have a HP Pavilion Computer with the following features:

Pentium III 450 Mhz
Seagate 40 Gb Hard Disk
128 Mb RAM

The motherboard has onboard nVidia Riva TNT chipset with 8 Mb memory, and there is a spare AGP slot.

Since HP has not provided me with manual for the motherboard, I have two queries:

a) How do I know what's the speed of my AGP slot i.e., is it 1X, 2X, 4X or 8X.

b) Do I need to disable my onboard graphics in order to install additional graphics card in the AGP slot, If yes, then how do I do it?

Thanks in advance.

[deadkenny]

I suggest you try to get a manual from HP (possibly online?) first. Otherwise, you can at least determine the chipset the board uses and get some specs from the chipset manufacturer (Intel, Via etc.). There's no way that the slot will be X8, it may not even be X4. However, you don't really need to worry about that because a X4 card will work on a X2 AGP slot. What you do need to worry about is whether the slot is AGP 1.0 or 2.0 (that not the same as X1, X2, ... ) because 1.0 supports only 3.3v and if you get a card that's 1.5v you will fry it. Regarding the onboard, there might be an option to disable it in the BIOS (there usually is on a board with integrated and an AGP slot).

[cooolcaat]

thanks a lot deadkenny ....

i am still figuring out quite a few details before I can finally complete the upgrade .... so there will be quite a few questions and confusions ...

tell me, would the voltage really make any difference because ... if i am right .... i can't fit an 1.5 V card in an 3.3 V AGP slot or a 3.3 V card in a 1.5 V AGP slot .... unless of course, it is an AGP UNIVERSAL SLOT, in which case both 1.5V and 3.3V cards will fit in .... and finally an UNIVERSAL AGP GRAPHICS CARD will fit into both types of AGP slots with voltages 1.5V and 3.3V.

am i right ??

For your information, I am providing the following links for you to read and give your views.

1. AGP Specifications 1.0, 2.0, AGP Pro, 3.0

2. AGP Connector Chart

3. AGP Graphics Card Implementation

regards ....

cooolcaat

[deadkenny]

Looks like you've got it pretty much covered. If you've got any doubts you could simply get a universal video card and cover all the bases.