Which graphic card to get?

There are never any compatibility issues. A graphics card will perform the same no matter what brand. That's like saying an Asus gpu will work better with an Asus motherboard, which isn't true. They are separate in function.

I said defragging wouldn't help his problem, it's just good to do.

 

One thing that I forgot to mention is if you think you might want to play with linux in the future you want to go nvidia. Historically they have been better at releasing drivers. Also I mentioned the option of going with a higher end 200 card over the low 400 but then you wont have dx11 support. Not a big deal now but down the road you might kick yourself.

 

classic

 

That's like saying there are no MAC OS based viruses.

 

You do realize that with the way PCIe works, the P4 needs to move all information to the graphics card's onboard RAM before it can process anything, right? A graphics card can't just fetch resources off the hard drive (or out of RAM) for you; it needs to ask the CPU, which then gets it into the computer's RAM, then it writes it to the graphics card RAM.

 

Not between intel/ati and amd/nvidia. Obviously you could have a power supply not good enough or a gpu that goes in the wrong socket. I wasn't talking about motherboard issues etc though. :

 

An ATI card isn't made with the idea of being run on an AMD computer. It's made with the idea of being standards-compatible with PCIe 2.0.

Where you really run into compatibility issues is between motherboard chipsets and graphics cards. Chipsets aren't just made by AMD (they don't even make their own motherboards) and Intel, either. Nvidia, Via, and a few others make their own chipsets (I think NVidia is stopping soon, though), and every single company designs their own peripherals to add on to the board, so you hardly ever see "reference" designed boards from any of the 3rd parties. Reference boards are ones designed exactly the way a chipset manufacturer intened. For example, a reference Intel board made by ASUS will be exactly the same as the board made by Intel in design, with different suppliers for capacitors/minor chips/etc. ASUS in particular never releases reference boards, along with most of the other 3rd party manufacturers.

 

exactly.

 

Since it starts up staying "Over clocking has Failed! Pres F1 to go into setup. Press F2 to load defaults and start" Means "something" (likly the video card since I am having all these display issues) was overclocked and having problems. My friend worked for the company and got me this computer so i know FOR SURE that it was a server workstation computer (but ya its weird that they would overclock it).

That what i thought, it would overheat on my monitor. My buddy claims that with the new WoW patch and increased graphic requirements (my comp first Blue Screen of Death and froze/crashed was during WoW) my card might have somewhat fried and now is still running but has permanently damaged components.

Thank you for all the help everyone, you guys are bringing up great advice/points i havent thought of.

 

I am on a very tight budget and not trying to build a full new computer. If getting a card will suffice for now I will do that and upgrade the rest later down the road.