What kind of graphics card slot?

[mollipen]

So a while back, I helped my mother upgrade her computer (custom built PC), and her computer works fine except for some display lag. (Windows sometimes take a few seconds to refresh/go away, scrolling gets laggy sometimes, etc.) My guess is this is due to using the onboard video, instead of a dedicated video card with a decent amount of VRAM, so I was going to look into getting her a moderately priced card. (Nothing to run games, just to help the overall computer experience.)

Here's the problem: PCI, PCI-X, AGP, I don't begin to have a clue what she has. Is there a way through Windows XP to tell me what kind of graphics card slot is in there? If not, and I have to open the thing up and get inside, how do I know what kind of slot it is?

(Yes, my Macness is showing through here.)

[Josh]

TAKE IT TO A TECHNICIAN YOU MAC FUCKER!

[mollipen]

I thought you were my friend Josh.

[cka]

either look for the motherboard specifications on the internet, or crack the case open

if its brown and near the top of the expansion slot array, it's agp
if it's white, thin and kinda long and near the top of the expansion slot array, it's pci express (x16)

if neither of those are on the motherboard you might have to find some cheap pci card to use instead, and dollar for graphic they're the absolute worst... however, if it's just display lag you might want to consider throwing some more ram in it and increasing the onboard video memory allocation to its maximum (I have geforce 6150 onboard video on this puppy and I can run lots of opengl/directx9 crap with ease thanks to the 256mb of allocated system memory) or upgrading the display drivers to a newer version

see what happens when you use macs you lose all common sense

[Manic Miner]

Took me less than a min to get this pic to help u.
Could have done the same...

http://www.si87.com/Products/Videocards/agpvspci/

[Dyne]

normally an onboard card will just make your image look like smeared shit, not cause "display" lag. your symptoms are probably lack of ram (at LEAST 512 with xp, gig is preferred) and this is causing the OS to go to the pagefile on the HDD to refresh. access time from the HDD is not as fast as ram and this will usually cause symptoms that seem to be video related.

keep in mind, onboard video doesnt have any memory of its own. the card takes whatever amunt it promises to have straight from system memory. so if you had 512 and it wants 64, well xp takes 256 just to start. run a couple apps and you see where this is headed.

of course getting a dedicated video solutions is never a bad thing. just trying to save you some cash if need be.

case in point. if it ran fine before, its not the video. that did not degrade. the OS did and you either need more ram or start some spring cleaning.

[mollipen]

case in point. if it ran fine before, its not the video. that did not degrade. the OS did and you either need more ram or start some spring cleaning.

When I got the machine upgraded for her, it was pretty much a 100% upgrade of every part save the case, so there really isn't a "before" to compare it to.

Basically, one example of what I'm talking about is after a while of use without a restart, if you say bring up the Start menu, and then dismiss it, the undrawing (not a word, but you get the idea) of the menu is much slower then it should be. I checked, and it seems like the machine has 512MB of RAM, with 64 of that going to the video.

So, bumping the RAM and bumping what the video card gets would be a better solution then an actual dedicated video card? (And as far as graphic drivers, I already made sure the machine was up to date.)

Took me less than a min to get this pic to help u.
Could have done the same...

The main question I had about that was how I could tell through the OS what kind of slot the machine has. Mac OS is smart enought to tell me that info, I thought maybe Windows would be as well.

[stormy]

Sounds like RAM to me too. Even the shittiest onboard video should have no trouble rendering Windows. Buy more RAM and maybe a $15 graphics card.

You might also be able to tell what kind of graphics slot you have with the device manager. I'm not at home to check but even if there is nothing in the slot the controller should show. It would say something like AGP controller, or PCI controller.

[Tommy Tallarico]

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Visio...oductDetail.do

You can get decent 64mb PCI cards like that for cheap. Every computer has regular PCI slots (but don't confuse them with PCI-Express/PCI-X, which are the newer slots for serious video cards). AGP is the older standard that your mom's computer most likely has, but it's not necessary to get a card for it since I doubt she'll be playing Counter-Strike: Source all day.

I can understand the frustration of the laggy interface because my video card recently died and I had to put in my old Geforce 3 as a holdover until I got a new one. Even instant messenger programs had interface and menu lag. It's maddening.

[Compass]

Did you run the usual virus and anti-spyware software? Bring up the task manager when the computer gets slow like that and see if there's a specific process taking up CPU cycles. I used to have only 512MB RAM on my machine and never had your mother's problems.