Buying the perfect CM Video Card- HELP!

[JeffRaider]

Okay, I'm going to upgrade my video card, and I need to know a few things. . .

1) How do I know if I've got/need an AGP or PCI card? I've got an RIVA 128ZX right now. . .

2) How do I check what kind of motherboard I have? I've heard of serious conflicts between some of the cards I've looked at and socket7 motherboards.

3) What cards work well with CM? I know to stay away from anything Voodoo from the problems on this forum.

Thanks for your help!!

[This message has been edited by JeffRaider (edited 08-14-2000).]

[Schrullenhaft]

You may want to find a manual on your system/motherboard and start there. Your RIVA 128ZX may be a built-in chip on your motherboard. I can't remember if that chip is an AGP implementation or not.

Hopefully your documentation will tell you what slots you have and whether or not you have an AGP slot to install a new video card into. Socket 7 motherboards usually have problems with AGP cards for a few reasons.

1) There isn't enough power supplied to the AGP slot. This is a motherboard design issue and usually can't be fixed.

2) The chipset for the motherboard doesn't handle the AGP card very well. Possible compatibility issues or just a slow chipset.

3) BIOS compatibility. Some BIOS upgrades can help with AGP issues, but this is a bit rare.

Since you're running a Socket 7 motherboard the higher-end AGP video cards are probably overkill for you at the moment (unless you intend on upgrading to another motherboard/CPU in the near future).

If you know the brand, model number and revision of your motherboard, there may be information on the Net that may give you some more details about video card compatibility. Some revisions of a motherboard may fix some of the compatibility issues.

If your documentation doesn't give you any useful details on your motherboard, then you will have to open up your computer to get the relevant info that you need. The model number and the revision number may be silk-screened (painted) on the board, you'll have to look around to find it (it may be in small letters around the edge, etc.). As for slots an AGP slot will often be near the top (in a "tower" case), set back from the PCI slots (towards the front of the case) and they're often brown colored (while PCI slots are often white).

It's possible that your RIVA video is an AGP video chip, but there may not be an AGP slot. What you may have to be careful of is that if you rely on your documentation alone, it may say you have AGP, but it may not mention that you don't have an AGP slot.

Anyway... if you find that you don't have an AGP slot or if you want to avoid the possible AGP compatibility issues with your motherboard, I'd suggest a TNT2 based PCI video card. Guillemot makes the MaxiGamer Cougar PCI with 32Mb of video memory. The nVidia chipsets seem to be doing fine with CM.

The Voodoo cards themselves aren't really that bad. The latest and greatest 5000 series is bound to have problems since it is so new. Hopefully driver patches in the near future will fix some of the issues.