I'm still using a 2005 system with a P4 3.2Ghz and an Nvidia GeForce 6600 graphics card. I really want to get a new system but I'm on a pretty tight budget right now, and was thinking about just upgrading the graphics card to get better performance on Call of Duty 4 and a few other games. Currently, COD4 only runs on the lowest settings, which kind of sucks, even though it still looks pretty good.

I've read a few things here and there about bottlenecking on an older CPU if you try and put in a beefy graphics card. Does anybody have any advice or suggestions about what graphics card would be better than mine without being overkill, and if it is even worth it at all? Any new card would also need to have dual monitor support.

Many thanks.

The first thing you need to figure out is what type of expansion slots your pc has... I'd guess only AGP, but you should check if you have 4x or 8x AGP.

Once you do that, then I'd check on newegg (which is the only place I ever shop)... they make it really simple to search by slot type.

Then you should post back on this thread so we can all take a look =)

I'd look up the specs for the machine you are using... according to that image, it seems like you might have pci express, but the question is whether it's 1x or 16x... might have to even open it up to take a look.

You could try typing in: dxdiag into the "Run" box under the Start Menu. That tells you all the components on your computer. I'm not sure if it will give you all the info for the Video Card, but I cannot test right now because I'm running Linux Ubuntu.

Hope that helps you

you should be able to find this out if you look up the exact computer that you have and it should give you all of the info that you need.

edit: or if you post up model # here i might be able to help

Having said that though, when I look in the machine I only see one PCI express that the grapics card is in and then two regular PCI slots. I dunno where this 4th slot is supposed to be.

Usually they combine PCI express x16 and x1 and claim there are two slots, when it's just really one. That slot can be used for either type of card.

Since you can do PCI Express x16, you should be able to upgrade to almost any video card on the market. I'd check out the VGA charts on Tom's hardware (use the add a product dropdown to do comparison)
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html

You might be able to get a fairly inexpensive used card on ebay that would perform quite well. Here's one I found: http://cgi.ebay.com/XFX-NVIDIA.....dZViewItem

I'd do some research, figure out the best deal for your money. You could also splurge and get an 8800GTS, since that would also work in a newer PC later on.

yes you cpu should but the power supply might not. i think that you may want at least 500 - 600 watts

Yeah my psu is only 300W. Balls. Is upgrading the psu easy enough then?

So a more powerful psu will work fine with the motherboard I've got? It's an Acer G91M with the Intel 915P Grantsdale chipset.