PCV-RX504 and graphics cards

[philmj]

Hi, I have been happily running a PVC-RX504 for a couple of years now. Did a couple of upgrades in the past: added 512Mb of RAM and changed the original graphics card to replace it with a nvidia FX 5700 LE card (128 Mb).

The time has come to look at spicing things up again if at all possible, as some of the kids latest games show some lagging as soon as the graphics settings go above the "low" rating.

My question is: how do I define the highest spec of graphics card supported by the P4S533VL motherboard? The last thing I want to do is to buy more kit to see that there's no meaningful impact on performance.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[seb21__]

The problem is more the Powersupply than your Mainboard. It was designed for your VAIO. Not for Highend graphics cards. And you can't change it. You could get problems with newer cards. A very instable system could be one problem.

[philmj]

Thank you for your reply. I understand the risks associated with the power supply. I guess I need to look at its specification too and assess whether it would support other graphics cards.

What parameters should I be checking out? Wattage is what comes to mind but there may be others?

Also, as far as the main board is concerned, I recall that it supports AGP 4x and that the AGP aperture is set at 64 Mb. Is there any possibility to increase the latter to 128 Mb? With the over-simplified Bios menu available, such a tweak doesn't appear to be possible.

Which brings me to the final question: can the Bios be upgraded with the standard latest release from ASUS or would this also lead to problems?

Sorry for so many questions, I'll appreciate any help that anyone can provide.

Regards

[harvey]

Did you experience any problems when upgrading to 128MB.
I am about to upgrade my PCV-RXG408 from 64Mb to 128MB but Sony warn that this could upset settings and in particular when operating recovery.