Installing a graphics card

The graphics card or Video card is a very popular thing the upgrade. Either through want or need you will find that upgrading your graphics card is something you will have to do in the end. Fortunately its not such a daunting task as you might imagine. As the graphics card is just an expansion card (an important one) it is quite easy to physically swap. What you have to look out for is what type of Video card you have. You will either have an AGP or a PCI card. If you need your card to be the same type as your old Graphics card then look at the slot its in before you start. 

If your card is in a slot like this, 

then you have a PCI graphics card. These are older types of card but still many of the better cards such as the Geforce 2 MX are still made in the PCI form. So no need to panic. You may want to look to see if your motherboard has an AGP slot though just in case because your options will be greatly increased if it has. PCI cards are still made but most of the fastest cards are only made in AGP format.

The AGP slot looks like this,

Modern motherboards that don't have onboard video are all fitted with an AGP port now. This is mainly because Graphics cards are produced in AGP version nearly always and PCI as a secondary option. This is due to the greater memory bandwidth than can be provided by the AGP Bus. AGP is also twice as fast in MHz as PCI. AGP is run at 66MHz while PCI is only 33MHz

Once you have discovered which card you require you can purchase you card. Once bought you will want to install the card into your system. The first thing you should do is NOT to remove the old graphics card and place the new one in the slot. A common mistake that can lead to small problems later on. The first thing you should be doing is removing the drivers and programs that are associated with the old graphics card. In add and remove programs from the windows control panel you may find drivers and programs from your old graphics card, If you do not find any reference to them that is not a problem. Just head off to the system properties and remove your card from the Display adapter section.

You can get to the system properties by right clicking on My Computer. Right clicking on this will give you the menu below (Win ME, Win 98 users will get a similar menu) From this menu you want to select Properties such as the one highlighted below. Windows XP users will find the same menu's available but may have to go a different way around it.

This will bring you to the system properties. You will start on the general info page. To change that click the Device manager TAB such as highlighted below. 

Once there the screen above will appear listing all the devices on your system. Once you see this you want to do to Display adapters and expand that branch of the menu. You video card will be listed on the next level once the branch is expanded such as above. Then right click on your video card and select remove. The computer will as you to confirm this and will probably ask you to restart the computer. When it asks you this, select no. And shut down the computer manually. You can then switch of the computer and we can swap over the cards.

Part 2 - Fitting and installing the new card