Upgrade the Video Card

How to Decide if a Video Card Upgrade is Cost Effective

You can spend more money on a high-end PCI Express or AGP adapter than on a PC. That doesn't mean that putting a $400 video card in a $200 PC makes sense. Yes, the video rendering of your 3D game will be faster, but it's not an efficient way to gain performance. If you have a fairly recent PC (less than a year or two old) and you play a lot of games, a video card upgrade may really get you improved performance, but I wouldn't go over $100, and make darned sure that you actually have an AGP slot as opposed to onboard video, or you can't do it.

PCI Express is the latest upgrade to the PC bus, with the initial speed for PCI Express video cards being 16X the basic PCI Express speed of 250 MB/s. This puts the initial PCI Express video adapter speed at around 4 GB/s, or twice as fast as the 8X AGP video cards. You'll need a brand new motherboard to upgrade your video card to PCI Express, there's no way of adapting it to an older motherboard. The current AGP implementation supports 4X and 8X AGP adapters. Older adapters, and older AGP slots, are not compatible, so don't try this upgrade unless you can find the documentation on paper or on the web that shows your motherboard will support a new high-end video adapter. Operating system compatibility is usually not an issue, the video card manufacturer will have a full set of up-to-date drivers for whatever OS you're running, at least if it's Windows.

The video card upgrade itself couldn't be simpler, a single screw secures the video card, unless you have one of those new-style cases where all of the adapters are secured by a lock-down bar, that in turn is held in place by two screws or a latching mechanism. Once your new adapter is installed, Windows should pick it up and search for a current driver. Depending on the video card manufacturer, this is where the trouble often begins. Most video card manufacturers like installing all of their software and drivers from an executable, usually auto-running from the driver CD. Unfortunately, many people continue with the Windows "Add new hardware" wizard and end up with a partially installed software package, or even worse, the 256 color default SVGA driver. I have an illustrated page on how to replace a video card here.

I usually do whatever it takes to break out of the wizards, choosing not to install anything at this time, then swap over to the install software running off the CD. Another annoying "feature" of video card driver installations is that the CD usually supports a whole family of video cards, but even with the retail box, it can be impossible to figure out exactly which model you have! I've had to reinstall software more than once to guess my way into the proper driver set.

Another issue with driver CDs is they may contain a bunch of software distributions, like Direct X or Adobe Acrobat, that are older than versions of these programs that you already have installed. They can also feature player software for DVDs that aren't supported by the particular video card upgrade you bought, or which require you to pay a licensing fee.

Illustrated Guide to replacing a Video Adapter