Oh, My Computer is Doing Better!

I had the nice man from the local computer shop spend a day with it, and it's suddenly doing MUCH better. (This is the first time I've shacked up with a guy who isn't some sort of super-nerd. It's making me reconsider this decision! It's okay that Sig Other can't fix the car, but I may have to trade him in on someone who can fix the computer!) Anyway, as a result, I'm not thinking of buying a new system any more, just a new video card

I can only use a PCI card, since my motherboard has video built in. So, is this an okay card for under seventy bucks?

Cinematic Graphics Power
The GeForce FX 5200 GPUs deliver best-in class performance and features at a great price. Experience cinematic-quality effects and studio-quality color, and the industry-leading performance and rock-solid driver stability you expect from NVIDIA.

The only DirectX 9 compatible GPUs in their class, the 5200 models are engineered for compatibility with the latest gaming and multimedia software



AGP interface;
· PCI supports.

Chipset:
· nVIDIA GeForce FX5200.

Memory:
· 128MB DDR SDRAM.

General Features:
· 0.15u process technology;
· 128-bit memory interface;
· 256-bit graphics architecture;
·· 400MHz memory clock;
· 350MHz internal RAMDAC;
· 63 Million vertices/sec;
· 1.0 Billion texels/sec fill rate;
· 6.4 GB/sec memory bandwidth;
· 4 pixels per clock rendering engine;
· 16 texels per pixel with 8 textures applied per clock;
· CineFX Shading Architecture;
· 128-bit studio-precision color;
· High-performance, high-precision 3D rendering engine;
· High-performance 2D rendering engine;
· Advanced Display Pipeline with full nView Capabilities;
· Digital Vibrance Control (DVC) 3.0;
· NVIDIA nView multi-display technology;
· Unified Driver Architecture (UDA).

High Quality
Video Playback:
· Dual, 400MHz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536@75Hz;
· Integrated NTSC/PAL TV encoder support resolutions up to 1024x768
without the need for panning with built-in Macrovision copy protection;
· DVD and HDTV-ready MPEG-2 decoding up to 1920x1080i resolutions;
· Support for dual-link DVI for compatibility with next-generation flat panel displays
with resolutions greater than 1600x1200 without the need for reduced blanking.

Full Software Support:
· Microsoft DirectX optimizations and support;
· Full OpenGL 1.4 and lower support;
· Complete support DirectX 9.0 and lower;
· WHQL-certified Windows XP, 2000, ME, 98, 95.

Other Features:
· 15-pin D-sub VGA out;
· TV-out (Mini Din 4-pin S-Video connector);
· DVI-I;
· S-Video Cable (150cm);
· 3Deep.

Supports Resolutions, Refresh Rate (256 colors / 65K colors / 16.7M colors):
· 640x480, 60-200Hz / 60-200Hz / 60-200Hz;
· 800x600, 60-200Hz / 60-200Hz / 60-200Hz;
· 1024x768, 60-200Hz / 60-200Hz / 60-200Hz;
· 1280x768, 60-170Hz / 60-170Hz / 60-150Hz;
· 1600x1200, 60-120Hz / 60-120Hz / 60-100Hz;
· 1900x1440, 60-85Hz / 60-85Hz / 60-85Hz;
· 2048x1536, 60-75Hz / 60-75Hz / 60-75H

Thanks!

Bhodi her luddite Sig Other!

You cant use a PCI graphics card with SL. Heck I thought they didnt make them anymore.

Eggy, that can't be true - I'm using a PCI card just fine with SL now. It's just a piddly little GeForce2 with only 32 megs of Ram, and I want to update it.

Bhodi a PCI card is a waste of money. The PCI bus is almost 10 years old and will be deprecated in favor of a new standard real soon now, and well it can only run at a maximum theoretical speed of 133 megs/second. I know people with faster network connections than that
The modern AGP8x buses run at 2700 megs/second and they are still too slow compared to the 19800 megs/second data transfer abilities of modern graphics cards.
Are you sure youre running SL on a PCI card?
I had my card set to PCI mode for a while and it was horribly unplayable. It's not supposed to work at all and its said to make SL very buggy and crashy.
I think it would be best to save up for a new motherboard with a real AGP slot and a real AGP graphics card instead of adding duct tape to a dying system. But thats just me

I thought SL required more ram...

Maybe it DOES work with 128 MB! Shoot I should have tried to do it before going out and buying more ram

Actually scratch that more ram is helpful


Go AGP

Derek, she was referring to video ram, in the graphics card, not main system memory.
I have 256 megs and I find my system swapping now and then... I would really recommend everyone out there who does not yet have a gig of ram to go and get it. I played SL on a system with a gig of ram and it went smooooooooth. SL will hold cached textures and sounds in ram as much as possible, so the greatly reduced disk access makes for very silent and smooth playing

I'm no super expert on hardware but hold on, why can't you get an AGP card? Even if your motherboard has built in video (I'm pretty sure I've seen this before), I would figure you could disable it in the BIOS. An AGP port should probably be a brownish (longer) port near the (white) PCI ports that your cards are plugged into. If there is a port like that whether it's being used or not (!?) you should have AGP.

Your motherboard doesn't support AGP at all? (there's only PCI ports on the thing....?!) Then your motherboard would be a POS!

Oh and BTW, since you have a 32mb card--what happens when you try to set your video ram (in SL) to 64 or 128? Just curious

Hmmm... okay, I only think my computer won't take an AGP card because the guy at the store told me that if I had video on the motherboard then it wouldn't. So I'll look into that!

Man, do I miss having a geeky boyfriend. This having an artist boyfriend instead just doesn't cut it when it comes to keeping up the hardware!

Most motherboards with embedded graphics chips do not have an AGP port. I heard there were exceptions but I havent yet seen them. I think its basically because the chip is added to the motherboard by connecting it directly to the AGP-related traces on it, minimizing motherboard redesign. A motherboard with both a chip and a slot would thus be the equivalent of a motherboard with two AGP slots, something which I have also never seen anywhere

You're right, the one I was thinking about with the integrated video doesn't appear to have one. Nevertheless, my verdict still stands--your motherboard is a POS.

To put it bluntly

(My experience have included "issues" with motherboards that have lots of integrated stuff...)

If the motherboard has an AGP slot (the brown one... white are PCI and black are ISA (for those of you who have them)) then it should handle AGP.

Upgrading to 512 MB of RAM is probably the most bang for buck when it comes to improving your SL performance.

Yeah I mentioned that but based on what Eggy said and this crappy motherboard manual (which has integrated graphics) I have sitting here it's not looking likely. Unless that tech was wrong and there's an AGP slot there. (doubt it)

Since your computer is probably "aging" at this point, I bet RAM would be a good upgrade. (If it's running OK but not great.) Mostly because I think the old crappier RAM like SIMM is cheaper than the new stuff. So you have more money to spend a year or two down the road on a new system, heh.

LOL garoad! SIMMs were the memory in my 486 10 years ago.
Then we started calling them DIMMs and now theres SDRAM, DDRAM and RDRAM. DDR is similar to but better than SDR because its faster. I'm not a hardware engineer but I think it actually works at the same speed but transmits two chunks of data at a time. Hence the SDR / DDR nomenclature for Single Data Rate and Dual Data Rate. Or something
RDRAM is some kinda wacky proprietary system that is going down the drain fast. It looked good on paper but didnt live up to its promise. Plus that Rambus company is evil!
Anyway Bhodi here's what I would do:
Buy a new box with an Asus motherboard, an AMD Athlon CPU (2000XP will do) and a 512 meg wad of DDR RAM. The 333Mhz kind is cheaper and there is no noticeable performance difference, but do get a brand name wad of RAM since there is a lot of crap memory out there that will break down in less than a year. for the graphics card I would pick an FX 5600 though a 5200 would work just as well.
Take your old computer to the shop so they will gut it for parts. The hard drive, floppy drive, CD drive, sound card and other miscelaneous cards dont really need to be changed.
Or just do it yourself, assembling PCs is no different from building stuff with legos. Most of the time there is only one place where things will fit, and where there are many it usually makes no difference. I started doing it when I was 14 you know.

A big difference between assembling a computer and legos is to make sure everything is plugged in right before you turn it on. Oh yeah, and make sure you're electrically discharged before you touch the pieces (or better yet, grounded). I've accidentally fried all sorts of components over the years.

lol

Actually I pulled that outta my ass, didn't mean to use that word (SIMM)...shows how long I've been hating this junk I guess. But I think older ram (I think it was SDRAM) was cheaper, last time I checked. I've been shopping around for RDRAM lately but it's not cheap enough for me yet.

There are motherboards with both AGP and on-board video. Not only am I running on one now (using my Radeon card, but SL also ran with the on-board), but almost every motherboard that TigerDirect sells has both. It is hard to find a motherboard that *doesn't* have both.

Usually there is a BIOS setting to disable the on-board graphic chip. But some ASUS motherboards are known to have a problem with that - sometimes but not always fixed by flashing your ROM.