help w/video card

My previous comp was dilapidated with a bad video card that would place small black areas on my AV skin. I recently got a replacement (used), turns out the video card in here is worse, in that I get huge black areas, or my skin looks like static, or my skin is jacked (eyes on cheeks, lips on neck, etc). I'm looking for a replacement video card, the difficulty being that I have a PCI slot. I found a GeForce 6200 nvidia 256MB card I could afford. SL minimum recommendation is a 6600 though. Would the improvement be worth it? Is there a $50ish video card that would work? Please help, I can't use SL until I get this resolved.

Thanks,
Eoin

PCI slot only is pretty much a bottleneck for anything graphics. I would not invest 50$ in this as for the same price you may be able to get a better complete machine on EBay.

End of life, keep it as it is for what you can do with it. But don't plug in more money in outdated components you have to throw away in a year or so.

Try Nicholaz Old School or Cool Viewer 1.19 while still using your old box.

Thanks Boy. Replacing the machine is not an option as I'm at work. I can switch out a component or two, but not the tower itself. The current video card is 32MB and crashes SL when it runs out of memory. Simply enlarging the SL window can trigger this. I'll try Cool Viewer, so long as it allows my AV to rez properly.

Thanks!

Best answer:

Get a new computer. You're more than overdue for an update. PCI video went the way of the dinosaur in the 90's. It's silly to keep pouring money into such an old machine, even if it's only $50 at a time.


Direct answer to the question as asked:

Newegg currently has no less than 42 PCI video cards available. 27 of them are under $75. From that lot, I'd probably recommend this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130451

Keep in mind, though, no PCI video card is going to run SL very well. Not only is the interface itself extremely slow by modern standards, the cards aren't going to give you much bang for your buck. For example, the same amount you'd spend on the 8400 in the above link would buy you a 9600 with almost double the memory speed, 4 times the memory bandwidth, and 4 times the stream processors, if you were using PCI Express instead of PCI:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187032


ETA: Your second post appeared while I was writing this one, so I didn't see it first. If the machine truly is non-replaceable, then that 8400 is probably your best bet.

Suggest you try Nicholaz Old School (1.18.0.6), that should still have a bit lower memory requirements as it has no voice.
http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/

Boy, I tried the Cool Viewer and I'm experiencing the same issues. I'll try Nicholaz Old School now. Should that not work I'll take a gamble on the 8400 recommended by Chosen. I should be able to expense report it anyways

Good luck with it. If you do get that card, and it doesn't work, just return it. Newegg is good like that.

And for pete's sake, tell your boss or your IT department, or whoever makes tech buying decisions for your office, 10+ year old technology is just plain embarrassing. Tell them to replace that old clunker you've got with something modern, or you'll pick it up off your desk and beat them and their mothers to death with it.

Getting to SL from your work must be nice.

Especially being able to "expense report" an item you are buying with the corporate funds for your own personal entertainment on their time.

SL is a nice perk. As for getting a new comp, this IS the new comp. Just got it to replace the previous clunker last week. No telling how many times it's been recycled. BTW, totally kidding about the expense report, but I see that happening before they update our comps.

LOL...I am on SL mostly from work...thats why I don't have a job in SL...would be like having two jobs!

phfft: if it wasnt for my boss we would have diskless terminals running linux on a 8 core monster stuffed in the closet

but its just easier (acc to him) to plop down a few hundred dollars on each desk and have me waste my time chasing windows viruses and licenses all day and "wonders why it takes so long to develop that new db interface" just so i can do it again every time ms farts out a new version of word (sigh)

oh and our light bill broke 15 grand this month