Simviation Forums

So.........I'm going to buy the Radeon 9800 and I find out that I don't have an AGP slot .  I have something called an PCI (slot?) .  Is this bad ?  Should I feel depressed ?  The helpful - and quick-talking - salesman says that what I really want is a GeForce FX5200 .  Am I being waltzed down the garden path or is this really my best bet ?  Also .........illegal second question......how do you guys put the nifty pictures into these queries ?  Kindest regards.......Terry.  

I hate to be the bringer of bad news but pci is real bad for games.

Your onboard AGP graphics might even be faster than the PCI 5200! Don't waste your money on a PCI graphics card. Better to upgrade the mainboard to something decent with an AGP slot, it's no big deal. Just rip it all apart and start again!  

Any Newbies or anyone planning a purchase reading this...... don't buy a system with onboard graphics..... not if you want to have decent graphics.

Do you mean like the Pic of my X-15? It's the signature in my account settings in these forums. Or if you mean actually posting a pic, look at the instructions in the screenshot forums.

You may improve your onboard graphics, (I assume thats what you have) by going into your BIOS settings at bootup, and allocate as much shared ram as possible to the onboard graphics chip. The RAM will be "robbed" from your main memory and not "shared" as implied. So you need sufficient RAM to do that.

ie. If you have 512mb RAM

Share 128mb (many boards only share up to 32 or64mb)

Windows uses 120mb

Flight sim uses 120mb........

see the ram dwindling away?

Don't confuse the shared ram setting with the graphics window or graphics aperature setting. They are different.