Graphics Cards and the joy of replacement

[antitheftmilk]

Did some looking around and I am now clueless. Any and all help with be accepted with the greatest of joy and thanks!


Did some diagnostics on my comp. He needs a new graphics card, I knew it was obsolete, but had no idea just how much. Blah. It is approaching the sad time of retiring the Dude from his Dude-ship. I think I can get another two years out of him at least! Yes, yes...

Here are his specs:
HP Pavillion 7850
OS:ME (4.90, Build 3.00)
BIOS: Phoenix
Processor: Intel Pentium II @930 MHz
256 RAM
Current Graphic Card: Intel 82810e @ 5.5 video memory

Now he has a built-in card on the motherboard, and an empty slot for a card (white slot). Anyone have any ideas for a good card? My system is used for gaming, thus the upgrade.
One with at least 128 video memory?
I know that much more then that will just be useless, my system is not exactly new....

[hexadecimal]

ok first off i dont think you have a PII...most likely a P3 because PII's never hit past 500mhz

now...if you want a good gameing card we need to determin your motherboard stats....

your motherboard should have anyware from 2-5 pci slots ...usualy white..have a long section of pin acceptors with a separater followed by a small section of pin aceptors...you can tell if you have an AGP slot *advanced graphics port* by looking at the difference between the 2....AGP is usualy brown and is set closer to the middle of the board...pci are closer to the side...and AGP is most always the very first slot

now if you plan on running games like Doom3....you will need an AMD 2500 xp at least...and a 256...my friend has a machine similiar and it will run Doom3 but after 5 straight hours it starts to lag down

if you are planning on unreal tourny 2004 or similiar you can make due with a 64 *like me*

but you requested 128 which will be fine for now but when you do decide to go with upgrading...i recommend agp8x board with a 256 8x agp speed

Nvidia vs ATI

nvidia is a very good company to get video cards from...usualy compatiable with programs with out much of a hitch...but sometimes you need to load patched drivers for the latest game

ATI is currently a favorite by the lab rats on TheScreenSavers on TechTv...so i would go with them but if you have a preference il post both an Nvidia and an ATI card

ATI ---> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...284&CatId=1095

Nvidia-->http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...469&CatId=1102

hope this helps

[allenb1963]

Looks like hex gave you a pretty good tut on the ATI/NVIDIA choice, but I'll bet you can beat TigerDirect prices by visiting www.pricewatch.com . BTW...NVIDIA now has out a PCI card that pretty well has AGP-like performance.

[©opy®ight]

yep. hex gave you pretty good info there, so im just gonn say that i used NVIDIA for 3-almost 4 years, never let me down. I use an older GeForce 2 MX 400 XFX 64 MB, i play UT2004 and Need For Speed Underground, UT2004 is 6 GB's big, and needs good graphics and i can say the game NEVER lagged, be it online play or single player !

so: i recomment Nvidia !

[SDK]

Looking at this webpage ( http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...cname=bph06283 ), you have no AGP slots available in your computer.

My personnal suggestion would be to save more money and buy a brand new computer because you don't find a lot of video card working on a PCI and most of them are old and you won't be able to play game release after 2002.

[©opy®ight]

video card working on a PCI and most of them are old and you won't be able to play game release after 2002.

umm....

BTW...NVIDIA now has out a PCI card that pretty well has AGP-like performance.

No games after 2002 ? I play UT2004 with a damn geFrce 2, doesnt lag, believe me he'll play

my computer is
Celeron 800 Mhz
60 GB HDD
20 GB HDD
382 RAM
geForce2 MX 64 MB

[Und3ertak3r]

there are Gforce4 MX 440 i for PCi with 128MB of ram.. BUT.. your PCI buss is a Slug..

Don't expect any more than Geforc 2 -64mb ..performance from even the best PCI card.. .. what the txfer rate on PCI 33mhz or so? and AGP 2 or 4x?
summery.. it will work.. but will not be near the full performance.. certainly better than running no card at all..


Cheers

[Tim_axe]

The difference in PCI and AGP is huge.

PCI - 33MHz bus, 32bits wide, 127.2MB/s TOTAL
AGP - 66MHz bus, 32bits wide, 1x/2x/4x/8x pumped, 254.3 / 508.6 / 1,017.3 / 2034.6 MB/s DEDICATED

In PCI, you must share the PCI bus with your Network card, your Sound Card, your USB, in some cases your Hard Drives, etc. AGP is only for Video, and gets direct access that PCI doesn't get. Please note that just because the bandwidth is higher, it doesn't mean an AGP 8x card will be like 2x better than a 4x card - they are about the same...and better than PCI cards...

Also, IIRC, with PCI you don't get GART functionality. Basically, a video card with say 64MB of onboard texture RAM can't really load the entire game's polygons, textures, etc., into its small 64MB. Your BIOS lets you set AGP arpeture, where your system RAM can make up the rest of the 64MB you need for a game that needs 128MB of video RAM. This does result in a performance hit, although very small because of how fast AGP is and how GART works. In PCI, you loose this. And it is a lot slower. So your framerate will suck on video hungry games.


You could go for a PCI video card, but they have essentially zero resell value no matter how much they cost brand new. There really isn't much of a market for them, since everyone is on AGP, and salivating needlessly about PCI-Express. But another thing to consider, is that your CPU and other parts will become a bottleneck. For example, download Joint Ops : Typhoon Rising Demo. I play it a lot, and on my OC'ed 900MHz Pentium 3, I could only play 50 person games since my CPU couldn't handle 100 person games. On my new rig, my long-distance Wireless Internet connection is the bottleneck more than my old video card (only performance related thing I didn't upgrade) since when the pings are low I can get much better framerates than when pings are high...


Summary: Don't buy an expensive PCI video card since they aren't worth anything to resell. Upgrade your RAM (which I think is PC-133 SDRAM), but don't invest a lot of cash into it since it is an obsolete type and won't resell well. Get a total of 512MB, and it should help a lot. Good luck.

[nihil]

This is quite an interesting one

PIII/933MHz That is reasonably fast, and would be worth an OS upgrade to XP. You should also upgrade the memory to 512Mb if you go that route. Performance should increase by around 25%

Your memory is PC100 which is a little surprising for a machine with a 933MHz processor. I would guess that you have 2 x 128Mb strips, which is a pain if you want to upgrade.

I do not think that your MoBo/BIOS will support 8x graphics, anyway you don't seem to have an AGP slot. A GeForce2 or GeForce4 PCI card with 64Mb will give you the best value.

Your machine has a very puny power supply (185w) so you need to be careful what you try to add.

Good luck

[Und3ertak3r]

Question: didn't some of the Celerons report as PII's.. in some progs.. and in around the >800Mhz didn't the cels also have a 100 FSB? or am I getting confused..

Thge PC 100 mem was as cheep as pc133 but the big guy would have wanted to piss off there backlog of stock

Bit like the majors selling PC's with 40G hdd's .. to buy a 80g at wholsale is about the same.. but they have a shitload of them.. so ppl are getting pcs with hdd's that should have left the market nearly a year ago..

Cheers.. I will now climb off of my soap box