Could someone explain to me...

[foomonkey]

...how i work out if my motherboard is DDR3/DDR2/DDR compatible for a graphics card?

i'm trying to buy a graphics card for a old pc that doesnt have one but im not sure to what type of graphics card to go for. how do i work out what my motherboard will support?

this pc is a good 6 years old (my gf's old pc) and was bought for £500 at the time if this helps narrow down to what it could support.

EDIT - i took the RAM out to check what type it was to find its DDR. is it most likely then that the motherboard will only be able to support a DDR Graphic Card on its PCI-E port?

 

[foomonkey]

cheers ... will try out one of those programs tomorrow at some point.

i don't plan on spending much, like £30 if that on a gx card. just something to tide it over as i'm giving it to my younger brother as a gift for xmas. looking to modify this system so that it can handle Dawn of War 2 and other similar games for him.

 

[foomonkey]

ok i finally found time to do this and i ran CPUID and this is the info i got;

Monitoring
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mainboard Model AMETHYST-M (0x000002E9 - 0x1786F9C8)

LPCIO
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

LPCIO Vendor SMSC
LPCIO Model LPC47M192
LPCIO Vendor ID 0x55
LPCIO Chip ID 0x60
Config Mode I/O address 0x2E
Config Mode LDN 0xA
Config Mode registers
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
20 60 01 08 00 44 00 2E 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
30 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
60 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Register space LPC, base address = 0x0800

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

...can anyone tell me what kinda gx card slot this will hold and whenever it need a DDR/DDR2 gx card??

also i noticed that this pc has 512 MB of DDR ram in it but Winxp system info only picks up 384 MB RAM. is there any reason to this as i wanted to add up to 2 gb or RAM to this machine. i don't want to spend that cash to find it won't work for some reason.

cheers!

EDIT - after checking this website i've found that the motherboard does have a PCI-E slot which is fantastic but does it matter which type of gx card i go for (DDR/DDR2/DDR3) ??

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00378480&dlc=en&lc=en&cc=us

the problem with the RAM though still remains if someone could help me out and explain why this has happened ??

 

[foomonkey]

Why do you want to add a gfx card? While most add on cards will perform better than the integrated card, if we are to offer advice you need to state what you want the gfx card for.
http://217.110.237.67/Manuals/7184-engl v1.x.pdf

i don't plan on spending much, like £30 if that on a gx card. just something to tide it over as i'm giving it to my younger brother as a gift for xmas. looking to modify this system so that it can handle Dawn of War 2 and other similar games for him.

clear enough at all ?

next time please read what was said

 

[foomonkey]

To be clear on the original question though : The type of memory on a graphics card has no relation at all to the motherboard.
If the graphics card has GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR5, whatever & the motherboard supports DDR1, DDR2, DDR3, it doesn't matter.
The only way in which a graphics card needs to be comatable with a motherboard is by connecting through the right slot.
If your motherboard supports PCI-E then any PCI-E graphics card will work no matter what type of memory either the graphics card or motherboard use.

Cheers !