Swapping GFX Cards

[Ewan]

Ok, I'm thinking of switching the graphics cards in my home PC with my uni one.

The home PC is:

Ahtlon XP 2500
256mb RAM
GeForce FX 5600



My Uni one is:

Athlon 1GHz
1gb RAM
GeForce 4 MX440 (AGP 8x)




Now, I know I would probably only see a slight increase in graphics performance initially, as the processor in my Uni PC is the bottleneck. But I am likely upgrading that (and motherboard) to an Athlon XP 2200, which would probably run quite nicely with the FX5600. Also, I'm buying a 17inch LCD monitor, which would be nicer to have some more graphics power, as they don't run in lower res as nice as CRTs do.


I was wondering, would there be any motherboard compatibility issues? I know that certain motherboards support certain processors (depending on socket, FSB etc). But as long as both have AGP slots, is it a similar sort of thing for GFX cards?

Also, apart from that, would there be any downside to this? The one that currently has the FX5600 has a 17inch CRT (running at 1024 x 768), and when I am not here is used only for web browsing and word processing (and other similar, non-graphical things). So I can't really see how putting in a geforce 4 would have much of a bad effect.

So, basically, general "Yes this is a good idea" and "No this is a bad idea" posts are what I'm looking for. I'll probably ask my Mum/Dad first, as this is technically their PC, but I can't see why they would care (Mum normally uses her Laptop, which is pretty good anyway).

[Stabwound]

It looks like the GeForce FX5600 comes in both AGP and PCI, so you better find out what kind yours is.

[Ewan]

Agp

[Rab]

Put all the better stuff in the PC u use the most, and sell the other one.

[Subjugation]

As long as they are both AGP cards, you shouldn't have a problem with interface compatibility. And as far as mobo compatibility, you're swapping one Nvidia card for another, so there's probably not going to be an issue there either.

As far as the driver goes, bring the driver CD along with you, but you might not even need it, since that series of gfx card is a little old.

[Ewan]

I got bored waiting for the replies so just swapped them anyway. The Nvidia drivers are pretty generic, so there were no compatibility issues. All seems to be working fine and dandy. I'm pretty amazed how well CS:S runs on this PC, considering it only has a 1GHz CPU, it even ran okish when I had a GeForce 2 in here (before I put in the Geforce 4).


Hopefully my housemate's spare mobo works, cause then he'll sell me it and his Athlon XP 2000 together for around £15 (~$27) and then I'll even be able to play FEAR on this computer!


Oh, and in response to Rab's comment, the PC I downgraded is the family home PC, and the one I upgraded is my Uni PC, so selling either isn't an option. If I could, I'd take the whole motherboard out of the other one, and buy some more RAM, but it's got so much shit on that it runs slow with a athlon 2500, I'd hate to see how it runs with this 1ghz inside it. Although it would have 1gb of RAM instead of the 256 it has now.