.......CONGRATULATIONS Coingames ON REACHING 13,000,000 MOT POINTS !!.......

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Well Done Indeed!

To start, you should decide what sort of graphics card you want. The low end cards are small and do not require much power. It's almost certain that they will work in whatever system you want to put them in so long as it's not an ancient system. If you want to do any GPU crunching, then you will need to get a card with one of the nVidia chip sets and the low end cards will not be fast enough to return results in the allotted time.

For a good summary of how fast the various cards are, you can look at this chart at Tom's hardware. (You may also be interested in reading the entire article that is associated with that chart.) You can use the chart to see how high you want to aim performance-wise. The cards at the very top of the chart get expensive rapidly. If you want to do GPU crunching, choose a 9800 or faster card. A lot of people seem to find the GTX 260 is a good choice between performance and cost. Now for will it fit / will it work....

- I assume you are running an XP or Vista system and you've been good about keeping up with the updates. If you have not, then put the updates on. This will ensure that you do not have compatability problems with the drivers for whatever card you get.

- Be sure it will physically fit in the case. Some graphics cards are fairly large. If you have a normal tower case, it will probably fit. Check that there are no obstructions near the expansion slot which brings us to ....

- Check that you have the right sort of expansion slot available on your system. In this image you can see the sort of connector at the bottom edge of the card (PCI-E x16). Also, most of the upper end cards take the space of two expansion slots because they use one to push the exhaust air from the fan(s) directly out of the case (this is a good thing). Odds are that any relatively recent desktop will have at least one of these slots. Make sure that the slot next to it is open or that if the slot is occupied that you can move the card to another slot.

- Ensure your power supply can handle the card. For most of the upper end cards, a 400 watt power supply (or more) is recommended. If your power supply does not have a sticker on the back with its rating, then you can probably see one on one of the sides of the power supply if you open the case.

- Check that your power supply has the right connector for your graphics card. Most of the cards use either at 4-pin or 6-pin power connector in addition to the power they draw from the expansion slot.

- Most of the upper end graphics cards use DVI connectors to connect to the display. If your monitor only has a standard VGA connection, you will need an adapter. DVI connectors are almost always white. VGA connectors are almost always blue. Many newer monitors (say 2-3 years or newer) will accept both.

Let us know if you still have more questions.

- D

Yep - what he said. Be aware that this particular card requires 2 6-pin power connectors
(from the web site)
Power Connector 2 x 6 Pin

and is a littler larger than most. If your power supply does not have two 6 pin connectors, you may be able to use molex to 6-pin adapters like this one.

- D