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[Solved] What is my motherboard even?

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Best answer from hunter315.

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dinostabOMG   08-25-2009 at 01:16:07 AM

Three years ago I built a system around a Core 2 Duo @ 2.4 GHz. I remember I got an Intel Motherboard. Now I need to replace the graphics card, but I have no idea which motherboard I chose, hence which graphics cards are compatible with it. I have looked all over the surface of the motherboard but I am not sure where/what I am looking for in terms of the model number. Agh! How can I tell what my motherboard is, hopefully without having to take the system apart again? I'm running XP 32 bit and Ubuntu, if there are any tools to help. Or maybe there's just some sticker I'm not recognizing. Thanks.

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Best answer from hunter315
totally irrelevant, you dont need to know what type of motherboard you have to know what graphics cards will work with it.

 

Which of these slots do you have? Hopefully the long black one, the colors may be different depending on the motherboard manufacturer.
http://img388.imageshack.us/img388/7596/pcslotscy2.gif

 

edit if you have a PCI-E 16x slot thats half of what we need to know, what resolution monitor do you have and are you gaming?

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dinostabOMG   08-25-2009 at 01:18:45 AM

Oh, one other thing. I know I need a PCIe card. Is this enough info to make a selection or does the motherboard's model really matter?

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hunter315   08-25-2009 at 01:21:00 AM
Best answer

totally irrelevant, you dont need to know what type of motherboard you have to know what graphics cards will work with it.

 

Which of these slots do you have? Hopefully the long black one, the colors may be different depending on the motherboard manufacturer.
http://img388.imageshack.us/img388/7596/pcslotscy2.gif

 

edit if you have a PCI-E 16x slot thats half of what we need to know, what resolution monitor do you have and are you gaming?

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by hunter315 on 08-25-2009 at 01:28:53 AM
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dinostabOMG   08-25-2009 at 01:27:52 AM

hunter315 wrote :

totally irrelevant, you dont need to know what type of motherboard you have to know what graphics cards will work with it.

Which of these slots do you have? Hopefully the long black one, the colors may be different depending on the motherboard manufacturer.




Indeed, the long black one. Thanks for the response. I know it has a separate connection to the power supply. But don't I have to worry about what version of PCI-e the motherboard supports?

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hunter315   08-25-2009 at 01:33:01 AM

nope, PCI-E 1.0 and 2.0 are compatible, the card might run a bit slower on a 1.0 board but it will still run just fine. Whats the resolution, what power supply, and what budget do you have?

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dinostabOMG   08-25-2009 at 01:39:58 AM

Cool, thanks. My monitor is at home at 1600x1200. For the most part I am a 3D animation professional so that is going to be my first consideration, but I realize Quadro and Fire GL cards are not that different from their much cheaper mainstream equivalents, so I will probably go with one of those. My old card was a Radeon X1900 XT. I am hoping to stay under $200, and I don't mind either ATI or Nvidia, I'll go with the best value.

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hunter315   08-25-2009 at 01:42:40 AM

Oh, if you arent going to be gaming you can get a low level one, like a 9600 GSO or an HD 4670. Does your animation program have the ability to offload some load to the GPU or use CUDA on nVidia GPUs?

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dinostabOMG   08-25-2009 at 01:58:43 AM

Hm, well I wouldn't go so far as to say I won't be gaming, heh. But all the same, my work often requires very high (7-8 million or more) polygon counts and complex shaders. Unfortunately I believe that the software doesn't do much in the way of offloading calulations, though, or taking advantage of the most recent gaming technologies, for reasons of accuracy.

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hunter315   08-25-2009 at 02:02:04 AM

If you want to game at high detail level a GTX260 or 4870 will give you high settings and good frame rates at that resolution, the 9600GSO and 4670 will handle it at medium and save you a bunch. Just be aware that with the GTX260 and 4870 you should have atleast a good 500 watt PSU.

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dinostabOMG   08-25-2009 at 02:03:09 AM

Ok, cool. Well, thanks for all the help!

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