Thursday, April 26, 2012

How to Upgrade Your Graphics Card

Have you ever thought about improving your PC? Maybe get a bit more performance? As far as improvements to an old PC go upgrading your graphics card is one of the most obvious and most cost effective ways to achieve more performance.

How do you choose a graphics card?

We first need to determine whether your computer uses a PCI, PCI Express or the older AGP interface. This can easily be identified by color. PCI and PCI Express is white while AGP is brown.

Once you know the interface then it is onto who makes them. Well there are two types of graphics card producers - nVidia and ATI. Both do similar graphics cards and the difference in price is marginal. My advice is to set a budget, take a look at their products and then choose which card offers the performance you are looking for.

Before you install your new shiny graphics card you will need to uninstall the software for your existing card, and in most cases remove the existing card from inside the case. On a windows machine use:

Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs or Control Panel - Programs and Features.

         On a Linux machine use the package manager which came with your distribution or the uninstall instructions which came with the source code.

           Next we have to physically install the card. First thing is to unplug the computers power cable. Then you need to discharge your static electricity by either wearing an anti static wristband or by touching a piece of metal prior to touching ANYTHING inside the case. Failure to do so could result in damage to components inside the case. Open up the case locate the graphics card and switch it for your new one.

             All that is left is to install the drivers. The graphics card should come with windows drivers on a CD. Just insert it and follow the instructions. On a linux system you will probably have to go to the venders website and download the drivers as source code. This brings me to a good point. To get the most out of your graphics card you should go to your venders website (will probably be either ATI or nVidia) look for the support or download section of the site and follow the links to the latest software for your card. Then you just download and install.