I have some questions on graphics cards, help please.?

Question

I'm shopping for a graphics card online.

I'm new to this so I don't know much.

I have three questions..

1. How do I know if the graphics card I want to order will fit inside my case? (I know about PCIe and stuff like that but I'm talking about height as in being able to go into the slot and letting the cover go back on the case comfortably.)

2. My friend bought a graphics card, he put it in, it worked but his sound didn't work afterwards, than his fan started messing up. What happened there?

3. I have vista, which has DirectX10, if the graphics card only supports DirectX9, can I downgrade?

The game isn't THAT demanding on graphics but I need an improvement on FPS.

My integrated card gets around 20 FPS constant when the highest possible is 32.

It lags very bad, my integrated graphics card is called Intel 946GZ express family chipset.

Would a graphics card like http://cgi.ebay.com/nVIDIA-GeForce-FX550... help alot more? do you think i can get 32 fps constant?

Answer 1

1. Unless your case is already noticably small and have some things possibly cutting it close to the case then you should not have to worry about it hitting the case. However if you have two components surrounding the video card then you may have to take the size into account.

2. Not sure what happened with his sound card. Perhaps he wasn't grounded when he installed the video card and damaged the sound card. Could have been a driver issue too. Which fan started to malfunction? I assume the video card fan? This can be caused if the fan is somehow unbalanced, unfortunately this error can be made by the manufacturer, he may have to get it replaced.

3. Don't worry much about getting a card that doesn't fully support Direct X10. All it means is that you might not get the full effects of some shaders supported only by Direct X10 compatible cards. It should still play everything fine though.

Usually ANY kind of card on the market today blows away any kind of integrated card, especially lousy Intel integrated models. The card you listed would definitely be an improvement, just make sure you know your computer has either an AGP or PCI-E port. PCI-E port is better.