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New Graphics Card Needed

kevvyb

kevvyb

kevvyb

Associate
Joined
10 Dec 2004
Posts
15
Location
London UK
Hi,

Really need some help. Need to upgrade an old LCD and am going to go for a 24 inch with native resolution of 1920x1200.

Only problem is my current graphics card (nVida 3d Prophet 3) only supports resolution up to 1600x1200.

So, need a new graphics card that will work on my mobo (Asus A7N8X revision 2) with no problems.

Will happily go for an 'upgrade' to my existing card but am not a gamer. Do do lots of photo editing and related memory intensive tasks.

Could anyone suggest some options as I think this may be a bit of a minefield. I would rather have tried and tested than cutting edge.

Thanks in advance for any replies.
 
New Graphics Card

Hi Weazle,

Thanks for your reply.

Could you give me little more about why you have recommended that card and on your comment about the Nvidias?
 
kevvyb said:
Hi Weazle,

Thanks for your reply.

Could you give me little more about why you have recommended that card and on your comment about the Nvidias?
Click to expand...

Oh i misread your original post slightly .. thought you were doing some 3d editing ..... in the case of photo editing then any modern ATI (48xx series) or nVidia (8800, 9800, 260, 280) graphics card will do the job. Image editing is more memory and hard disk intensive, you just need a graphics card that runs as many colours at your chosen resolution.

I got the OpenGL part mixed up too :P ... I've read somewhere that the ATI OpenGL drivers aren't as fast as nVidia's but for photo editing you don't need to worry about that as OpenGL is for 3D rendering.

I chose the 4850 as its performance/price makes it the best value card for a mid range graphics card. You don't need a high end 3D GPU such as an nVidia 280 or ATI HD 4870 if your primary computer is used for 2D image editing. For gaming its a different story ......
 
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mysticsniper said:
There isn't any 4850 GPU's that support AGP. The best GPU for your mobo is the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB ;)
Click to expand...

Was about to say the same having owned the same board and payed £170 for it back in the day tut tut :D
The 3650 is good enough if you don't game
 
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Thanks for those replies. Someone else has suggested that the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB might cause a bottleneck with the rest of my system and that it might be just as well to go for a previous generation card if the same ilk.

Would anyone have any views on that?

My system is:
Asus A7N8X revision 2
Athlon XP 3200 (2.2.MHz in dual channel mode)
2Gb RAM (Crucial)
Power Supply = Will have to take a look inside to identify. Would like advice on this.
 
Hi again,

Thank you all for your replies.

After much deliberation I have gone for the Sapphire ATI Radeon 2600 Pro 512MB DDR2 AGP card.

I am going to install this in advance of receiving the monitor. Just wondering what I need to do with regard to uninstalling my existing nVidia drivers. I have heard tell of a nVidia driver removal tool which implies that they may not uninstall completely? Would you think it likely that there will be any problems in this regard?

Now realised that my power supply is 300 Watt and min specs are 400 Watt for this card. So, could you now recommend me a good power supply unit?

UPDATE
Should have added that I run two 300GB hard drives, two optical drives in addition to the AGP card. I think that's about it in terms of power drain. There are currently 4 fans in my case. A front case fan, a rear case fan, the PSU fan and the graphics card fan.
 
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Hi

I am upgrading a machine bought in 2001 but which has been pretty extensively upgraded since. It runs pretty fast for everyday apps.

I may well wind up keeping this machine as long as I can. I have upgraded everything apart from the power supply. The mobo has been changed twice but by the supplier - that's the only component that I have not upgraded myself. It maybe that rather than buying a new machine I'll upgrade the mobo as well at some point just for the hell of it!! So a degree of future proofing to allow for further upgrades would not be a bad idea.

Probably £50 - 75
 
These are both very good power supplies and should suit your needs ...

Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU (CMPSU-450VXUK) £46.99

Tagan TG500-U33 500w 2-Force II PSU £58.74
 
Thanks will take a look. Interesting that you are not recommending higher wattages....can this be a misleading guide or would that just be overkill?
 
kevvyb said:
Thanks will take a look. Interesting that you are not recommending higher wattages....can this be a misleading guide or would that just be overkill?
Click to expand...
These are quality PSU's and will easily power your system or even a Core2 system and a 4850 which would be more power hungry than the rig you have. You could buy a YumCha 700w PSU which wouldnt provide as much consistent power as either of these PSU's. The main thing with powersupplies is the amount of constant volts they can supply on the rails (12+v on modern systems). Wattage isnt the ideal indicator, especially if comparing a quality PSU to a generic one. I can recommend a higher watt PSU but i dont think youll need it, unless your going to a Quad core crossfire system in the next couple of years.

just in case you are looking at a massive upgrade, look at ...

Corsair TX 650W ATX2.2 SLi Compliant PSU £64.61
Tagan TG600-U33 600w 2-Force II PSU £68.14
OCZ StealthXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply £58.74
 
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Here is where I've got too. Purchased the Corsair TX 650W ATX2.2 SLi Compliant PSU £64.61 and the Sapphire ATI Radeon 2600 Pro 512MB DDR2 AGP card. I didn't pay too much attention to the 'SLi compliant' thing. And of course, SLI appaers to be something to do with nVidia and I have purchased an ATI graphics card. I realise that this won't stop the thing working but before I unpack the PSU would I be better advised to change it?

Not really understanding what SLi is and whether it matters to me.
 
I have now installed the new PSU - so far so good.

Of course my mobo runs on nVidia Drivers so I have uninstalled the nVidia GART drivers but left the others so running add/remove again on the remianing nVidia drivers shows no GART:

http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/3748/nvidagartdriversgonege2.jpg

This is how Hardware looks in device manager uncet Display Adpators.

http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/9840/microsoftdriversuz8.jpg

Do I now have to uninstall the latter drivers which I think are part of XP but nonetheless are still nVidia drivers?
If I do that will I then be running in VGA mode and ready to install the ATI card and drivers?

When I get to isntalling the card, it requires connecting directly to the power supply and the card comes with a cable male 4pin peripheral plug and a floppy (graphics card) plug that are both wired from the male 4pin peripheral plg. The latter is marked 'GP'. Will I have to use this to connect to power supply and my hard drive or should I be able to use what appear to be the same connectors on the new PSU which I think would achieve the same configuration.

Do I need to connect to the hard drive with the operating system on it or does it not matter. I suspect it does not matter.

Also would you suggest I install with the driver sthat came with the card or get the latest driver from the ATI site?
 
Success

Hi all and Hi BigWayne

Yes I did buy that card and was thinking I had made a big mistake; maybe not after all.

All those who replied to my post may be pleased to hear that I managed to get the latest drivers installed for this card, no thanks to Sapphire, whose installer fell over because the ini file did not list the updated 8.7 driver for the 2600 PRO AGP (or any 2xxx series cards for that matter).

Wouldn't you think Sapphire would just take a few minutes to update those ini files and replace the duff download to prevent so much hassle for their customers? They cannot be unaware of the many postings on the net that mention the refusal of the drivers to load for some cards.

Using the advice I found here: http://www.fixya.com/support/t280288-sapphire_hd_2600_xt_driver_problems I edited the ini files (changing "ATi" for "Sapphire" of course) and the 8.7 drivers then installed without a hitch.

The screen savers, 3rd party AND standard Microsoft which were falling over on the supplied drivers now all work okay.

Now I just have to work out how to stop the CCC from allowing apps to change the monitor calibration profile that I load myself and install two new cooling fans.

And all because I needed an AGP card that would run a new monitor at 1920x1200 !!

And all on my 3 year old XP installation which fingers crossed, is still running well.

Thanks for all the advice.
 
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