Few questions about a new graphics card.

I currently have an itergrated graphics PC (yuck), and intend to upgrade to something in the range of a Nvidia 7600-7900gt, I havnt done this before so there are a few questions I need to ask.

1.) How do I check if my current motherboard has PCI-e slots.

2.) Is installing a new card over an intergrated difficlut?

3.) I have a slim-tower, will this affect cooling (or if can install it at all).

And finally, less about the card...

4.) I am currently using 2 2.8Ghz CPU's and 1Gb of RAM, would it be prudent to also upgrade my RAM to 2Gb?

If someone could give me some pointers on installing, that'd be great too.

I currently have an itergrated graphics PC (yuck), and intend to upgrade to something in the range of a Nvidia 7600-7900gt, I havnt done this before so there are a few questions I need to ask.

1.) How do I check if my current motherboard has PCI-e slots.

2.) Is installing a new card over an intergrated difficlut?

3.) I have a slim-tower, will this affect cooling (or if can install it at all).

And finally, less about the card...

4.) I am currently using 2 2.8Ghz CPU's and 1Gb of RAM, would it be prudent to also upgrade my RAM to 2Gb?

If someone could give me some pointers on installing, that'd be great too.

Wakkarr

Well firstly it's pretty easy to check for any free PCI-e slots just open up your case and look on the motherboard about 99% of computers have at least one free slot on the motherboard. You might want to check if you have AGP or PCI-e normally AGP slots are brown and PCI-e slots are normally black sometimes blue i believe, could be wrong,

PCI-e slot

http://www.viaarena.com/images/articles/pcie%20002.jpg

Secondly its dead easy to install a video card over an onboard card just plug it in when the PC is off but make sure you have taken the plug out too (you will be suprised how many people don't) and have your driver CD ready when windows asks you to install its drivers the whole process should take about 20 minutes at the most

Thirdly if you have an slim tower it shouldn't really cause too much cooling trouble as long as you have space for air to move around the card but you may need a low profile card (one that is slimmer) but i don't know what case you have

if you do need a low profile card then here is a site (US site i don't know much about it though as i'm Brittish so i shop at scan.co.uk for computer parts) you could try looking there but i'm sorry to say your choices could be a bit limited

http://www.directron.com/lowprofile.html

And finally you seem to have a pretty good CPU if its an Athlon64x2 you should be ok with that for now but as for RAM the more the better you can never have too much RAM, my PC can handle up to 4GB and i plan to buy an extra 2GB soon giving me 3GB

if you need help on installing video cards a simple guide is here its for installing an AGP card but the same applies for PCI-e

http://www.waterwheel.com/Guides/how_to/video/video_cards.htm

Oh and good luck and hope this helps, this is the best i can do as i'm not really an expert but i have had some experiance in installing video cards

I also plan to buy a video card soon hoping to get this little card here

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=575217