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Upgrading my graphics card to play Minecraft...

Ok so here is the relevant picture with some highlighting.



The "removable slot" (backplate) needs to be removed and the single screw holding it in place will then hold the card in place when installed.

The card will just slot into the "PCI-Express" slot and the green clip with click into place by itself when the card is fully seated.

When handling computer components its always best to make sure you do not have any static electricity which could discharge into the computer during contact. You can touch something grounded like a radiator to discharge yourself or use rubber gloves.
Do not work on a computer while it is still plugged in or the power is on.


Cards within your budget and on this website will be either a 8400GS or 5450. Might be worth starting a debate about which is better for minecraft to decide which to go for, I assume memory would not be an issue with that game so the 512mb versions should narrow it down a little more.
Length should not be an issue as they are pretty minimal cards by design anyway.

Anandtech's website seems to having some issues right now but they have a good comparison chart for card performance. I dunno if they list these cards but if they do I think you can find the comparison tool here - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU/88
 
Ok so here is the relevant picture with some highlighting.



The "removable slot" (backplate) needs to be removed and the single screw holding it in place will then hold the card in place when installed.

The card will just slot into the "PCI-Express" slot and the green clip with click into place by itself when the card is fully seated.

When handling computer components its always best to make sure you do not have any static electricity which could discharge into the computer during contact. You can touch something grounded like a radiator to discharge yourself or use rubber gloves.
Do not work on a computer while it is still plugged in or the power is on.


Cards within your budget and on this website will be either a 8400GS or 5450. Might be worth starting a debate about which is better for minecraft to decide which to go for, I assume memory would not be an issue with that game so the 512mb versions should narrow it down a little more.
Length should not be an issue as they are pretty minimal cards by design anyway.

Anandtech's website seems to having some issues right now but they have a good comparison chart for card performance. I dunno if they list these cards but if they do I think you can find the comparison tool here - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU/88

Thanks Michael, especially for the tips about static electricity and annotating my picture and reuploading it.
 
I think the bulk of Minecraft is CPU/RAM heavy for all the randomly generated stuff. Graphics wise it's fairly light, even for some of the higher res texture packs. I play it on my laptop (Acer 5739G - stay away!) which has an nVidia GeForce 310M - not the greatest of cards by any stretch - and I haven't experienced any major drops in speed (beside generic Java hangs) running all graphics maxed out; even with 64x texture packs (haven't tried any of the higher ones).

It will run better now as well since they introduced occlusion culling. I should think you could easily find a £30 card that will run it fine
 
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