I have a slight dilemma... I own a PC that has a certain video card style... at least it won't take the card my bro-in-law gave me. It has a different style card (won't fit my open bay)... the size doesn't fit, whatever. I've added dvd drives, and cd-roms, even vid cards on older PC's but this one has me stumped... Now the question is this (calling all techies!)... Is there a site that has a compatibility generator? Kinda like on www.crutchfield.com? They have a list of car make and models, and then it generates what products will fit... Is there such a site for PC's and video cards etc? I have an older (2003) Sony Vaio desktop, model number PCV-RS 312V... it has a 64 M on-board vid card, now I'd like to upgrade to at least a 256 vid card so I can play Battlefield 2 (and the more current gen games) online without lag... and they need that much anyway.. KNow of anything I can look up and cross reference? Or perhaps what card to get? The one my bro-in-law gave me was a "Diamond Stealth S120, featuring Radeon 9550" but it doesn't match the slots... I feel so out of touch.
Hey IROC, I've been up late so I was looking up the info you needed and here's what I can tell you: You need to check to see if you have an AGP 8x slot on your computer, basically there should be three similar looking slots and one lone separate one above the three. It seems the RS-320 model has one, but I haven't seen much on the 312, and I would assume it would except - It seems that the old ooold RS models had no AGP slot, and if you don't have one then you can't upgrade. Assuming that you do find this lone slot - the card you have should fit - make sure that when you are installing it that you are making sure that the L-shaped tip is fitting into the slot before you are attempting to press it down. To get you up to speed on video cards - there are two major types of video cards (minus servers)- PCI, AGP, and PCI-E. PCI is outdated and video cards on these slots are almost as bad as the integrated video. AGP is like the slowly fading yet still practically on-par standard, and PCI-E is the current-gen Your computer either has a AGP, or nothing, and I would bet that it has an AGP considering that the 320 does so I would give it another try, just locate the slot above the 3 PCI slots and make sure you are installing it correctly.
Thanks... I see no AGP slot, and that is the version card I have... I think my 3 slots are PCI.... btw- where'd you look that info up?
take a pix of your motherboard and we can tell you right off if you can upgrade your video card or not. if you dont think u have a agp slot, most likely you cant upgrade your video card. you can buy a new pc or a new motherboard thats compatible with your cpu and a new video card.
Yea.. I was already considering just using the P4, etc from this one, and building a new one from the board up, in a new tower, etc... I'm using it right now, but I'm sure I'm not able to throw it in there. I saw no slot that had the same "foot print"
Lots of cheap boards are PCI-only, but they usually have a built-in video card. If that's your case, you're out of luck with your free card, and either need to buy a PCI card or upgrade the board, processor and memory, not to mention possibly the power supply. The last few times I've upgraded computers have been out of necessity of a better video card. When you get down to it, the system has to be better to run these faster games too. If you want to see some examples of motherboards, just go to Frys and study what they have on sale, and I'm sure it will give you some ideas.
