my present card is a low spec basic nvidia card that came installed with my pc, its given me problems on a number of games and as the games are getting more advanced its getting worse, so i decided a few weeks ago to get an upgrade, i read up on how its done and thought i can do that so i looked around a few sites and come across a site called crucial.com which has a download feature that scans your pc and tells you what is compatible with your pc, it gave me a choice of 3, 2 radeon 9800 pro 1 256mb + 1 128mb + a radeon 9600, i fancied the 9800 pro 128mb and i new it would go in my system but i thought i'd look around a bit more to see if i could get it a bit cheaper, so i did and i found a ATI radeon 9800 128mb DDR 8 x AGP and was

If your motherboard can take a video card that is rated for either X4 or X8, an X8 card should work.

All power supplies in the UK would be 230 volts. In the US they are a different voltage.

Usually the wattage of the power supply is printed on the power supply somewhere. You might have to remove it from the case to see it though. Do you have a list of what your computer came with anywhere?

i have a NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420 AGP 4X currently installed in my pc, also i have a computer profile summary with everything from motherboard specs, os, processor type and size, current and available memory, main circuit board details, you name it, its on it, " but i can't see the wattage anywhere" i've had the case off but there's nothing on or near the power supply, i have seen low wattage figures on certain small components but they are no where near the power supply, i think there just individual figures and nothing to do with powering the complete unit.

You'd have to look at the power supply. On mine, the wattage is always listed on top, right under where the top of the computer is. So in order to see the wattage, I have to remove the power supply. It should just screw in. If you have the computer on its side, you may be able to pull it out far enough to read it without unplugging all the connections.

True, the power supply wattage figure is the amount of power the supply is capable of producing for all components in total. If your individual components, for example, require, when added together, a total of 200 watts then a 300 watt power supply would be more than adequate.

just thought I'd add a final note to my problem page, well i got my new graphics card and also i doubled my memory, the memory installed like a dream and apart from a slight problem with failing to update my board driver my graphics card was quite simple to so I'd just like to thank you for your replies, Dave.

Well done Dave I remember when my hubby got my new graphics card... he gave me the box and said intstall it.... I got a great buzz out of doing it right first time

Mind you, going back years when he first built pc's (12 years ago), the power switch had to be wired up seperately and he would Never do it... I had to!! Didn't blow a single one up!!

Tig