What Graphics card do I use?

[Rumbolt]

I have a small motherboard and when I had the Internet shop make it and ship it I chinced on the graphics card, still don't know why I did that. I want to play games now and find the Nvidia 7025 &630a that came with it is woefully underperforming. Trouble is I can't make hide nor hair of the specs.

The board is an MSI model that's been discontinued, ddr3, phenom quad chipset 2 pci slots and pci express 1& 2 slots (which look different for some reason). The motherboard model is gf615m-p33. I need an upgrade bad, I want to play some games, but I keep getting scared that I'll buy a card to big, or has too many pins or will make the board blow up all because I don't know enough.can someone point me to a moderately priced that will fit this board and enable me to join the conversation. Thank you.

 

[Mahisse]

Hello
Your motherboard is a micro-ATX, whch doesn't really makes a difference. The slot sizes are the same so the only thing you need to worry about is if your case is big enough. Best way to find out is to measure the case if you don't have the case's dimension on some pape already. Most sites have the graphic card's dimension listed as well so you only need to compare the measurements between you case and the card.

What you really need to pay attention to is that your motherboard only has PCIe 1.1 slots. Today most motherboards are sold with PCIe 3.0 slots. This means you will probaby only be able to install Nvidia cards. I strongly advice you to read this article before doing anything else: http://www.overclock.net/a/the-final-answer-to-the-controversial-pcie-x16-version-compatibility

Also you need to tell us what kind of PSU you have and how many wattage it runs. This is also extremely important. You may have to open the cae and read on the PSU's label to find out.

 

[Rumbolt]

Best answer selected by Rumbolt.

 

[Rumbolt]

Thank you very much. My power supply is 500 W. Does that help?