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graphics cards?? i am looking at graphics cards for my pc its a pci-e card used mainly for autocad&3d modeling

i have 1gb of ram a pentium 4 3.6 and intel mother board running xp pro!! im using auto cad 2007 and revit and sketch up! i want to be able to upgrade to vista in the near future as well as this it is possible i could upgrade to 2gb of ram sorry the question obviously wasnt clear totally my mistake!! i wasnt asking about adding ram the mother board that i have is cappible of handalling up 2 4gb of ram but at the moment i can only afford to go up to 2gb! i wanted to know about a card that is compatible with both vista and xp so there is possiblitiy to upgrade in the future. the mother board has a pci- e conection and will be used mainly for autocad and 3d modeling!! the computer curently has a pentium 4 3.6 and 1 gb of ram that will be upgraded in the futer to 2gb

Public Comments

1. Depending on whether you have any spare RAM ports, and on the type of RAM, then it could be possibly for you to upgrade. As far as the graphics goes, chances are that PCI EXpress cards are used in business for 3d modelling and graphics, simply because they are better than integrated or ordinary PCI graphics. Why go Vista now? It currently has a lot of bugs and there is a 99.999999999999999999% chance that you will have at least 1 piece of software and/or hardware which will be incompatible with it. I would stay XP until at LEAST another 6 - 7 months.
2. all the upgrades you wish to do are totally dependable on your motherboards specifications your intel board uses a pci-express card but is it s.l.i(scalable link interface)this would mean you could use two graphic cards to add graphic capabilities with regards to your memory you need to go to http://www.crucial.com/ and run the online scanner,this will give you a accurate report on how much memory your motherboard can take and what type it needs,its very accurate a excellent(but expensive)graphics card used by c.a.d enthusiasts is the nvidia quadro series(http://www.nvidia.co.uk/page/quadrofx_family.html),these are designed especially with graphic design in mind,but are very powerful cards even so your actual p.c specifications are very good,the pentium 4 is top of the range pentium 4 and 1gb of ram is by no means small(for xp standards)however as you are upgrading to vista in the near future 2gb of memory will make life much easier but again this is totally down to your motherboard specifications,but most motherboards that can handle a pentium 4 3.6ghz processor have a board that can handle at least 2gb of ram good luck mate