PCI video card

[royvince]

Hi,

I have an odl motherboard with PCI slots only. I have an 1,2Gig Duron CPU on it and 512mb DDR. I want to upgrade my video card and I'm planning on buying a Radeon 9250 at 128 or 256mb. The question I have here is the following : Since I have to install it in a PCI slot, will I lose a lot of performance from the card and is it worth paying more for a 256mb card or does the PCI slot limits the video card speed??

Thanks in advance

 

[tweaker]

will I lose a lot of performance from the card

The PCI bus has very limited bandwidth compared to the AGP which is why PCI cards isn't very powerful. In other words, don't expect blistering fast graphics.

is it worth paying more for a 256mb card

No, on such low end cards you won't gain anything from having that much memory, 128Mb is more than enough.

 

[royvince]

But is it even worth buying a 128mb vid card in a PCI bus or the onboard agp4X (64mb) will perform better?? In fact, I just want to upgrade my computer to be able to play World of Warcraft... I think it sould be ok??

 

[ZER0X]

If you have an AGP slot even 4X I'd use that rather than the PCI, even if you got a PCI card with 128mb, a GeForce 4 agp 4X with 64mb will have it's advantages over the PCI.

Note that World of Warcraft doesn't need that excelent of hardware requirements.