New Graphic Card on Old MoBo?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andrew Fiddian-Green
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A

Andrew Fiddian-Green

I just tried Vista on an antique Dell testing machine, and it works! But I
can safely confirm that it looks completely lousy on an SVGA card...

...so it looks like upgrade time...

Given my mobo, can anyone suggest a card that supports aero glass? (The mobo
busses are AGP 66/133 MHz and PCI 33MHz)

Regards,
AndrewFG
 
Are you saying that you are using VGA to connect to your an older CRT PC
monitor and that you have your desktop set to 800x600 and 24 bit color as
that is the highest resoluion that your PC monitor can take? If your
configuration is different from what I interpreted please state what it is.
Note: very few graphic cards can improve how a disply's input appears since
that it is primarily determined by the display not by the graphic appears
for a given interace and resolution.
 
Are you saying that you are using VGA to connect to your an older CRT PC
monitor and that you have your desktop set to 800x600 and 24 bit color as
that is the highest resoluion that your PC monitor can take?
Click to expand...

Errr. No...
If your configuration is different from what I interpreted please state
what it is.
Click to expand...

The monitor can do at least 1280x1024x32bits

(I was asking about upgrading the CARD -- not the monitor...)

Regards,
AndrewFG
 
Is it AGP, PCI or PCIE?

As I said before, the mobo busses are AGP 66/133 MHz and PCI 33MHz

=> i.e. no PCIE and no AGP 8x ...
 
Items to consider.
If you do not plan on adding an HDTV tuner card then any of the current AGP
that work on 4x and have 128MB of memory and have native DX9 support will
work. A card such as a 128 Nvidia FX5200 which is available for either AGP
or PCI would suffice assuming you don't plan on adding an HDTV tuner card to
your system at a later date.
I had to add more main memory to get my system to work with Glass only to
find out the only the Window borders are "Glass" the window contents are not
so I don't consider that the expense was worth while.
All of the current cards also will support 1280x1024 x32 which I assume is
the native recolution of your display. I also have a 1280x1024 display and
my desktop looks just great on it at that resolution using either a VGA or
DVI interface.
 
Thanks for the advice. I have just ordered an FX 5200 card...

I was surprised by your statement that you had to add more main memory to
get "glass" working -- I thought this was a function of the video card and
not the main memory? Anyway, how much memory did you need before "glass"
could work? (I have 768MB)

Regards,
AndrewFG
 
I read one MS recommentdation that said 1 GB was required. I had 512MB and
am using a graphics chip on my MOBO that has up to 128 of memory allocated
to it. Glass did not work till I upgraded from 512 to 1GB. Others have
systems runing Glass with 512MB.
 
I read one MS recommentdation that said 1 GB was required. I had 512MB
and am using a graphics chip on my MOBO that has up to 128 of memory
allocated to it. Glass did not work till I upgraded from 512 to 1GB.
Others have systems runing Glass with 512MB.
Click to expand...

I will post my findings (concerning RAM) when the FX 5200 arrives.
 
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