Upgrade for GeForce 9400 GT (Gigabyte) video Card

[sqllady]

Hello,
I want to upgrade my old graphics card - 512MB GeForce 9400 GT (gigabyte) video card. The bus interface is PCI Express 16. My motherboard is: Gigabyte EP45-UD3R (socket 775) with 8Gigs of DDR2 ram. I have been told that in order to do this I must purchase a new motherboard because the newer graphics cards do not use PCI slots. As you can see I'm a novice in this area and would appreciate your advice.

thanks in advance

 

[Necc]

CPU? Resolution? PSU? games you play? Budget?

 

[MustISO]

Your motherboard supports PCI-express which is what all modern video cards required. Given the age of the system going too high end would be a waste and would require a power supply upgrade.

 

[sqllady]

My PSU is a Cooler Master RS-500-AMBA -D3 500W ATX 12V. CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale. 3.16GHZ LGA 775 65W dual -core processor.
I just started playing games and need a higher resolution for graphics i.e. spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations etc. thanks for your help.

 

[Binky]

~$80 HD7750 or GTX 650
~110 HD7770 or GTX 650ti

I think the 7750 and either of the GTX cards are generally much shorter than the 7770, if this is a concern. Your power supply shouldn't have a problem with any of them, but make sure the proper power adapters are included with any card you buy. You don't want too much of a video card in that system, since there's only so much your CPU can push.

 

[-Slacker-]

Hello,
I want to upgrade my old graphics card - 512MB GeForce 9400 GT (gigabyte) video card. The bus interface is PCI Express 16. My motherboard is: Gigabyte EP45-UD3R (socket 775) with 8Gigs of DDR2 ram. I have been told that in order to do this I must purchase a new motherboard because the newer graphics cards do not use PCI slots. As you can see I'm a novice in this area and would appreciate your advice.

thanks in advance

As a rule of thumb, don't ask the people around you for technical help instead of people on tech forums, or instead of just googling it, because chances are - and there is really no way that I can think of to say this any more politely - they don't know what they are talking about. Simple statistics.

PCI-Express, which is what you have, is the current standard socket format for discrete video cards, and PCI-E x16 can fully handle all video cards except, maybe, the geforce titan which you probably aren't concerning yourself with, purchase wise.

On topic, I agree with Binky. You don't want to get too powerful of a card, because your C2D will bottleneck it in most modern games - that means you won't get the card's full potential because the cpu isn't powerful enough to start as many frame cycles as the video card can handle.