Whew. Ok, I have virtually no working knowledge of computer hardware. Alright, I installed a RAM upgrade once, (had directions from a friend) but obviously, that's pretty easy. Now, however, I want to get a 3d accelerator card - I don't currently have one. Obviously, there are a *lot* of things to consider, I'm not even sure where to begin, but I'll ask the questions that my reading has brought up. For the record, my computer is a Dell. First, how do I find out whether my computer has an open AGP or PCI bus, and which type it is? Second, once I find the answer to the above question, are there any other things I need to take into consideration before choosing a card? I'm not looking at high end cards - just something DirectX 9 compliant that does the basics.. around the $100-$150 range. I noticed some mention of problems with power supply, is there a way to find out, in advance, if power is going to be a problem? Third, is there an online walkthrough/explanation of how to physically install the hardware? If there's software with it, I can figure that out no problem - the hardware will be a bit trickier. That's all I can think of for the moment - feel free to bring up anything I might be overlooking. Thanks in advance :)

1st how old is the pc? 2nd is it still in warranty and will you void it by opening the case? To find out what you can have you have to open the case and look at the motherboard (the thing with all the chips and circuits on it)and see if you can see a brown slot above some white ones. If you can then you have an AGP slot which you can install an AGP graphics card into. If there is no AGP slot then you are limited to what cards you can choose. I have never dealt or spoken to dell ever but if you can they might be able to tell you what is the best type of card to use with that specific model of pc. As for installing it's very easy, you might be using onboard graphics at present or you might already have a graphics card installed. If it's onboard then this will have to be disabled in the bios after you have seated the new AGP card in it's slot (line it up and push it in carefully but firmly). After you have done this it's just a case of switching on with the monitor plugged into the new card and windows xp should start as normal and may ask you for a driver disk, if it doesn't then you just need to install the drivers from the cd that comes with the card. "Unknown has caused an error in unknown, unknown needs to restart"

Whew. Thanks for the Barney-style explanation, heh. Big help. Unfortunately, I don't have an AGP slot, which isn't too surprising, considering what I paid for the computer.. it's about 6 months old, to answer your question. Now I just need to know a decent, directx 9 compliant PCI card. Anyone have any suggestions? Preferably under or around $150, if possible.

9100 Pro Error : Your cpu is not 1337 enough to view my sig

Yup, that's the one. Skip

Seeing as I'm new to this... anyone have a link to a reputable site that sells the 9100 pro? :)

futureshop.ca , if your in canada, if not I don't know