Computers in general

[malarkey]

Just a couple questions.

will all graphics cards work on all motherboards or will some be too new or whatever that it will not

what does the PC-2100, PC-2700 etc. actually mean and how do you determine which one you can use.


Probably easy to figure out but i'm on this and thought it would be easier.

Thanks.

[Otherdude]

Easy answer to your questions is: Depends on the motherboard, because no, not all graphics cards work with all motherboards, and PCxxxx refers to the speed of the memory (or at least, the marketing speed). We can probably better answer your questions if you have specific components already, or have an idea of what you want to buy.

[Incinerate_IV]

The 3 kinds of slots for graphic cards is PCI, AGP, and PCI Express. So if you get a AGP graphic card you need a AGP slot on your mobo, the PCXXXX refers to your memory frequency (higher the better), if you have a cheap processor like the celeron you only need PC2700 because its FSB is only 533, newer Pentium 4s use PC3200, but if you want to overclock go with PC4000+

[sunsmountain]

* Graphics
No, not all graphics cards work on all motherboards. There are 3 standards and thus, 3 slots:

- PCI. This is a really old standard (1990?) that is still used by sound cards, add-in cards for an extra joystick, and what not. The first graphics cards didn't require a lot of bandwidth (graphics were small in size, so number of MB/s required was also small), which is why PCI was used back then.

- AGP. Starting out with AGPx1 (@33 MHz)/x2(@66 MHz), AGPx4 quickly became introduced as early as 1997/1998:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...805/index.html

- PCI express. This newest standard has an effective speed of 16xPCI, or 533 MHz. That should be enough for all games for years and years to come, and it was introduced in 2004, so i'm expecting it to last until 2011.

* System Memory
PC3200 refers to bandwidth. To understand this, you need to know that 8 bits = 1 byte, and that SDRAM (DDR's precessor) didn't start out with speeds that high (in short, it's a marketing gig). So PC3200 = memory @ 400 MHz, and if you multiply that by 8 you get 3200 MBit/second. More or less. 333 MHz * 8 = 2664, round up to 2700 for clarity.
It's always wise to get good memory, as fast as you can, but not faster than the Front Side Bus (FSB) of your motherboard, unless you are going to overclock. The FSB determines how fast data can move from your processor to your system memory, it's like a highway of sorts.

DDR-SDRAM: October 1999 as graphics RAM ; October/November, 2000 as system RAM.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...019/index.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/motherbo...030/index.html

DDR2: not used as graphics RAM ; July, 2004 as system RAM
http://www.tomshardware.com/firstloo...716/index.html

DDR3: April, 2004 as graphics RAM ; 2007? as system RAM
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...414/index.html

* Processors
Whereas graphics and memory usually have a good chance of surviving any upgrade to a new system, the processor does not. Even for a crack like me, the Pentium numbering scheme is very very obscure. I need tables to look them up, and even then i'm not sure whether a 570 is better or worse than a 630. The Athlons are more forgiving, as they had Athlon XP's with numbering schemes somewhat related to the Pentium 4 processor speed (ie Athlon XP 3200+ is about a P4 3.2 GHz). After that they continued that way with Athlon 64's, Athlon FX are also clear: highend, single core processors. Athlon X2 is dual core.

As for upgrading your processor, socket 478 used to be a very good choice for Intel, but right now sockets, processors and roadmaps are changed almost every year. Socket 775 seems safe (just like socket 754), but Yonah (another new core, supposedly a good one) will have another Yonah-specific slot.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2569

For AMD, it has always been clear: Used to be socket A, now it's socket 939, and in the future (Q2 2006) it'll be socket M2.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2476
It'll also introduce support for DDR2-667 memory, and it won't go unnoticed.

[Erik]

About the memory: despite what other people say they are the names of memory standards... but the numbers do reflect it's speed.

pc133 is (SDR)-SDRAM at 133Mhz
pc200 is DDR-SDRAM at 100Mhz.
pc800 is RDRAM (aka RAMBUS) at 800Mhz
pc1600 is the same as pc200, they renamed it right after pc800 came out as a marketing trick to make it sound faster.
pc200/pc1600 has actually the same bandwith as pc800 (1.6GB/s).
Today RDRAM isn't used much anymore because they lost the battle with DDR, partly because of the renaming scheme and partly because RDRAM was more expensive to produce and has worst latancy.
Some game consoles like the Playstation2 still use pc800, but no PC's AFAIK.

pc266 (=pc2100) is DDR-SDRAM at 133Mhz.
pc333 (=pc2700) is DDR-SDRAM at 166Mhz.
pc400 (=pc3200) is DDR-SDRAM at 200Mhz.