This 7900GS is $165, minus $30 rebate. It comes with two DVI-I to VGA
adapter
dongles, so you can use two analog or two digital monitors. If you read
the
reviews on Newegg, there is a wealth of suggestions for this card. Like,
if
the fan noise is too much, you can fit a Zalman VF-900 as an aftermarket
cooler.
Or for better case temps, you can fit a slot cooler next to the card
(blows
out through a PCI slot hole).
There are 110 reviewer comments here, to help you. There are even people
who
have Dell 8400 in the reviews. Power consumption should be about 48W or
so,
based on being similar to the 7900GT (Xbitlabs doesn't appear to have
measured
the 7900GS).
BFG Tech BFGR79256GSOCE GeForce 7900GS 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16
Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16814143070
On this page, 7900GS rates 20th in overall capability. The emphasis in
this
ranking, is gaming and 3D.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/every-video-card-ranked-241379.php
Will it help ? I cannot really say, because all I can afford is one
monitor
From your description, it sounds like your Windows desktop is not painting
fast enough. There will be a significant CPU component to the desktop, so
you need to do as much as you can, to help out the CPU. For 2D, the video
card probably has accelerated line drawing, bitblt and the like, but at
least some of the screen rendering, is limited by the CPU.
I notice in your system description, you have 1.5GB of memory. That is
a weird amount of memory, and you should do what you can to help your
system. Here is some background reading material for your system. The
first link, is the 925X memory guide from Intel. Page 11 shows the
dual channel symmetric configuration, which is what you want for your
system.
http://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/applnots/30234403.pdf
These two links are on the Dell site. One channel consists of
slots 1 and 3. The second channel is slots 2 and 4. The memory
should balance such that: (1)+(3) = (2)+(4)
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim8400/SM/parts.htm
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim8400/SM/specs.htm
If you can, try to use the fastest memory for the machine. The
docs say that is DDR2-533. The Intel document says 3-3-3 memory
would only be supported by 925XE, and the Dell BIOS writers would
probably slow down some 3-3-3 DDR2-533 memory, to run at 4-4-4, to
please the staff at Intel.
You should also find a benchmark, so you can compare your current card,
to the new one, in a meaningful way. We'd certainly like to hear how it
turns out, and benchmarks are always nice. The only thing that comes
to mind for 2D, would be something like Wintune 97
I found WinTune 98 here. If you load this link, it will prompt to download
the file. The file is wintune_43.exe and is 1729KB.
http://comunitel.tucows.com/win2k/adnload/37681_30039.html
On my 9800Pro, 1280x1024@32bit, with a 3.2Ghz P4 Northwood, I get
"Video(2D) 305.3937 MPixels/s"
Maybe someone else has suggestions for a benchmark for 2D stuff.
To compare your basic computing performance, try out SuperPI.
http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/super_pi_mod-1.5.zip
Run super_pi_mod.exe (104960 bytes). Select 1 million digits and
run it. It helps if the machine is idle when you run the test.
My 3.2Ghz P4 processor (Hyperthreading enabled), with 1GB DDR460 CAS3
memory, gets 49 seconds. I used to get 44.1 seconds, before my anti-virus
software was installed. Less time is better.
Paul
