Help with video card compatibility..

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Permalink Reply by Greg De Santis on June 29, 2009 at 4:03pm

The HP Pavilion a6826f Desktop PC definately has one PCI Express x16 slot, which means that you can upgrade the video card with a pci-e 2.0 card. This computer system has one major flaw - it only has a 250 watt power supply. You can't even run an ATI Radeon HD3450 or a Nvidia Geforce 8600GT, where both require a 300 watt power supply at a minimum - plus these cards are the older DDR2 ones which can't run modern games.

Which means if you want to upgrade the video card, you have to upgrade the power supply. I would suggest at a minimum a 500 watt power supply to get you mid level graphics like an ATI Radeon HD4890 or a Nvidia Geforce GTX 260-216.

But the rule of thumb is to get at least a 700 watt power supply so you can run any single video card configuration out there from a Nvidia Geforce GTX 295 (Minimum PSU 700 watt) or an ATI Radeon HD4870X2 (Minimum PSU 650 watt) or any other card out there.

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Permalink Reply by Izzy on June 29, 2009 at 4:08pm

So get the comp, and then upgrade power......or just don't get the pc, and look around more?


Oh and PCI-e x16 means pci-e 2.0? didn't know that.

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Permalink Reply by Greg De Santis on June 29, 2009 at 4:28pm

Yes PCI-e x16 means pci-e 2.0. The funny thing is that a PC has three different PCI style buses and they are all different. You have the original PCI bus used in popularity with the computers in the 1990's, to replace the ISA slot, as an all purpose bus for hard drive controllers, network / peripheral cards and the original 3d video cards. You also have the PCI-e 1x which has a small 1" motherboard slot and is primarily used with the newer high speed network cards and sometimes the new high end sound cards, but the video card selection for this type of slot is slim to none - it never really took off for video cards. And of course you have the most popular PCI-e 16x slot that is for our favorite video cards of today.

It really depends on what you are looking for in a computer and how it will be used. Since it is a big purchase, you could always take the time to do some more looking around and pay close attention to the power supply in respect for future upgrades for your perspective video card. Also the big question is: do you want a pre-built computer or a kit you have to build, configure and load all the software yourself.

I am a PC gamer also and I have built all of my gaming PC's by buying and assembling them from individual parts. But I have been doing this since the early 1980's and it is my job anyway. So I know that you have to have enough memory, a big hard drive, a good motherboard / processor combination, a fast / modern video card and a power supply with enough wattage - and to find all of it in one package you sometimes have to look around for a while.

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