ASUS A7VC what graphics card ?

Abarbarian

Abarbarian

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Hi I'm not a techie type so bear with me .
I have a ASUS A7VC motherboard with a S3Graphics ProSavage 8A26 card (could be a S3 Graphics Savage /MX card ) . With a AMD Athalon CPU 1402Mhz processor , Memory 752 MB , Video 1024 x 768 True Colour 32 Bit .
I want to upgrade my graphics card . Is there anywhere I can find a list or information on suitable cards .
Thanks .
 
Hello Abarbarian, Welcome to PCReview. :thumb:

The A7VC makes use of the VIA KL133A intergrated chipset http://thetechzone.com/display.php?i=150&p=1#which features the VT8364A Northbridge with built-in S3 Savage 4 graphics and shared VGA memory from 8 megs to 64 megs. What this means is the video chip has no memory of its own but instead makes use of your SDRAM. You can assign it any amount you want up to 64 Megs
Click to expand...

I'm afraid your pretty much stuck as there is no AGP slot with which you could have added a better graphics card. I would not suggest trying to fit a PCI card either. :(

Sorry to say, but you would need a new MB, graphic card, CPU, memory and a few other bits-n-bobs ... you may as well buy a new system.

All is not quite lost as it would make an excelent "Linux Box" ... this is where I get comments from "the gang" ... if you were interested learning Linux that isexcelentld have not trouble runing FaD (Find-a-Drug) either. :D

But as for 'upgrading', no! ... save your money and buy new. ;)
 
My sister has the same (or similar) set up, and we bought her a GeForce FX5200 128MB PCI card for about £30, now as your CPU is not the fastest by today's standards, you wont really see much of an improvement, but you will be able to notice a bit of a difference in games and or video applications.. may I ask what you use the PC for? and why you want the upgrade?
 
Hi , thanks for the replies . I'm a first time pc'er and and bought my pc secondhand on e-bay as it was cheap and I thought it would do as a learning tool and no great loss if i blew it up .

I know its pretty slow for games and was just trying to find out if I could improve its performance slightly at a very low cost .

I recently bought a brand new game "Highland Warriors " for a £1 . Which requires Windows XP 256 MB RAM , Intel Pentium 111 800 MHz (recomends Intel Pentium 1V 1.3 MHz) which I think my pc will be suitable .

The game requires a card with 32 or 64 MB and T&I support .

When I try to load the game a box appears telling me my card only has 16 MB and then refuses to go any further .

Are you saying that I can increase the cards memory to 32 or 64 MB by changing some settings , how would I do this ???

Thanks .
 
The only option you have is to buy a PCI graphics card, as Jaguar suggested.

You would be able to play your £1.00 game on it then.

If you do fit a PCI graphics card, don't forget to disable the onboard graphics in the BIOS.

But if you want to do gaming, consider a new machine, I really don't think it's worth spending money on the one you have. Which is what Mucks said. And I agree :)
 
Thanks Floppybootstomp , for the lates games and a lot of the older ones your right a new pc would be great . I'm happy witht the one I've got for now as I'm working my way through the Laura Croft series . I managed to partition my hard drive so that I had 98 and xp , only trouble was I had to keep on using Partition Magic every time I wanted to change OS . Tried fiddling about with the set up and deleted the 98 ooops . May post another question about this later . I know I can wipe everything and re-install 98 and xp again but I need to keep on-line for a while and don't want the hustle of backing up everything etc .

What was Muckshifter on about when he said
" What this means is the video chip has no memory of its own but instead makes use of your SDRAM. You can assign it any amount you want up to 64 Megs " ?????????

PC's love em hate em , could you live without em ??????????
 
he means that your graphics chipset effectivley 'steals' some of your computers RAM and uses is as VRAM this is done at post-boot so these settings are made in your bios..be careful in there if your inexperienced, you may wish to consult some form of online manual for ur bios
 
the video chip has no memory
Click to expand...
Can't make that any more plane than that

but instead makes use of your SDRAM
Click to expand...
as it has no memory of it own it still needs memory ... so it uses your system memory which is your ram
A 'proper' graphics card has its own memory so is able to do the 'work' for itself

You can venture into the BIOS and allocate upto 64mb of your system ram to the video
If you do not know how to do that, leave it alone.

;)
 
Thanks for all your help .

Got into the spooky bios and changed the settings . The game ran but was a bit slow , as I expected . Everything ok for an hour or so . Then the blue screen of death appeared . Mebbes I'll try defraging and disc clean up before trying again . If no sucsess I'll just have to wait until I can get a new pc .
 
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