graphics card confusion....

Computer Forum Video Cards, Displays and TV Tuners
1

Hi Guys,

I hav a gigabyte ga-ma78gm-s2h motherboard with PCI Express 2.0(PCIE x16) slot(I bought it 3 years ago).Now I want to buy a graphics card for it.
My specs-
Amd authlon x2 dual core processor (6000+, ~3GHz)
4gb ddr2 ram
450 watt smps
my m-board has a ati hd 3200(256 mb) inbuilt graphics

I hav consulted with my brother & two card dealers. they said…

  1. my board supports only ddr2 graphics cards, ddr3 & ddr5 cards may fit in my board but they will overheat my motherboard. if i use ddr2 ram, i need to buy a ddr2 card.
  2. my board supports ddr2, ddr3 & also ddr5 cards. it has nothing to do with the ddr memory. if the card supports PCIE 2.0 then it will work fine on my board.
  3. my board will give great performance if i buy ati graphics cards, if i buy nvidia cards then it will not give great or its best performence & i may face many graphical problems…

Man I am totally confused…:confused:
pls help me out guys…
Thanx in advance…

2

In terms of RAM, your board only accepts up to DDR2.
In terms of graphics cards, you can use whatever GDDR there is (2, 3, 5… etc). The pci-e version doesn’t matter either since the versions are backwards compatible. Your motherboard serves 2.0. So if you buy a graphics card with 2.1, it will work but only at the 2.1 version. But don’t worry, the difference between 2.0 and 2.1 is miniscule and has no speed difference.
In terms of recommending only ATI graphics… bullshit. They must’ve told you that just because your board uses AMD processors. nVidia or ATI will both run fine at their own accord.

:wink: