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VGA card suggestions please!

nubber

nubber

nubber

Associate
Joined
14 Sep 2009
Posts
5
Hi all, I've just joined the forum and am hoping to pick your brains!

Being on a very tight budget indeed, I'm just about to 'retire' my old Athlon XP2400 based PC and 'upgrade' to a Compaq computer I bought from a friend. (Please stop laughing now!)

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...44&lc=en&dlc=sv&cc=se&lang=sv&product=3344582

I've added another gig of memory, so it now has 2GHz in total. Viewing pleasure is (barely) catered for by an ageing emachines 15"TFT screen @ 1024 x 768 resolution.

Unfortunately the fitted PCI-E graphics card has given up the ghost (7500LE 256MB) and I'd like to replace it. (The PC does have the on-board Intel graphics option but I don't want to use it)

I really like the idea of the passively cooled (silent) cards and am wondering if the Asus ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB would be a good card for me to get? I'm not that genned up on current VGA cards and wouldn't want to buy a duffer. I also wouldn't wish to spend more money than necessary and buy something too special that my PC won't be able to use because of it's own limitations.

I use my PC for watching DVDs, a bit of photo editing and occasionally play games like the original Unreal (which my old Voodoo 3 16MB card could handle fine!).

I've got an old Quadro FX1300 PCI-E 128MB card that I thought about using to save money.....how do you think this would compare with the Radeon HD 4350? I've never tried it (was given to me) but remember reading somewhere that the Quadro cards are not much good for gaming.

I realise my 'new' PC is hardly cutting edge but I'm sure I'll get a few years out of it.
Would really appreciate any comments and advice in general with regards to graphic card options with my PC. Thanks :)
 
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sounds like you have done your homework,
First off that compaq isnt too bad, i mean it has a c2d and could well support more powerful 775 cpu's.
the most important rule is that you must buy a card with very low power requirements that do not need additional power direct from the psu, as we can assume that compaq uses a very limited psu. (unless you are wiling to invest in a new psu)

The furthest you could theoretically stretch to is a 4670 or one of the 'green' 9800gt's that do not require additional power, but bear in mind retail pc's i think tend to give 275w-350w psu.

A 4670 or 9800gt would give you decent gaming performance at your res, a 4350 at such low res should allow you to play most games at low/med settings (thats a guess)

ps no quadro series cards are not designed for gaming

pss oh yes welcome to ocuk
 
nubber said:
Hi all, I've just joined the forum and am hoping to pick your brains!

Being on a very tight budget indeed, I'm just about to 'retire' my old Athlon XP2400 based PC and 'upgrade' to a Compaq computer I bought from a friend. (Please stop laughing now!)

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...44&lc=en&dlc=sv&cc=se&lang=sv&product=3344582

I've added another gig of memory, so it now has 2GHz in total. Viewing pleasure is (barely) catered for by an ageing emachines 15"TFT screen @ 1024 x 768 resolution.

Unfortunately the fitted PCI-E graphics card has given up the ghost (7300LE 256MB) and I'd like to replace it. (The PC does have the on-board Intel graphics option but I don't want to use it)

I really like the idea of the passively cooled (silent) cards and am wondering if the Asus ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB would be a good card for me to get? I'm not that genned up on current VGA cards and wouldn't want to buy a duffer. I also wouldn't wish to spend more money than necessary and buy something too special that my PC won't be able to use because of it's own limitations.

I use my PC for watching DVDs, a bit of photo editing and occasionally play games like the original Unreal (which my old Voodoo 3 16MB card could handle fine!).

I've got an old Quadro FX1300 PCI-E 128MB card that I thought about using to save money.....how do you think this would compare with the Radeon HD 4350? I've never tried it (was given to me) but remember reading somewhere that the Quadro cards are not much good for gaming.

I realise my 'new' PC is hardly cutting edge but I'm sure I'll get a few years out of it.
Would really appreciate any comments and advice in general with regards to graphic card options with my PC. Thanks :)
Click to expand...

I have the same core2duo, and with a decent heat-sink you can overclock it in excess of 3GHz from 1.86GHz which is rather a good way of a very significant performance hike for little extra cost :-)
 
Thanks D13 for the welcome to the forum and your advice.

The two theoretical max spec vga cards you mentioned I notice are both pci-e 2.0 cards. My slot is original pci-e (1.0?). I guess they'd work fine but be a bit ott and I doubt I'd see the benefits they were capable of. (Bit like running higher spec than necessary system memory).

As I mentioned, I really do like the idea of the totally silent cards and since the 4350 is cheap (around £25 - 35 depending on make/version).

How do you think the fanless £30 Radeon 4350 card would compare to my current PC's card which is an Asus V9400 (128MB, AGPx8...basic GeForce4 MX4000)?

Also, how would they both compare to my 'new' PC's original (dead) card - the nvidia 7500LE 256MB ???

Is the cheap fanless Radeon 4350 better than the other two?

BTW, my psu is indeed a 300w max unit.
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PwnDirect.....I use my PC for watching DVDs, a bit of photo editing and occasionally play games like the original Unreal....which I don't think demands a lot from a card as I used to happily run it on my old Voodoo 3 16MB. (Mind you, the Unreal game engine was originally designed to run optimised in 3dFX).
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Shikyo.....Nice looking card but I don't think I can justify buying one for my basic purposes. :(
 
why don't you want to use onboard when the onboard would be more than enough for what you want to achieve at your native res?

Basically I would put my money into a better monitor rather than a gfx card, onboard is fine for video/photo for pretty much any res from what I can see.

Oh and you won't be able to OC I don't think. OEM boards rarely offer that.
 
matt100 said:
why don't you want to use onboard when the onboard would be more than enough for what you want to achieve at your native res?

Basically I would put my money into a better monitor rather than a gfx card, onboard is fine for video/photo for pretty much any res from what I can see.

Oh and you won't be able to OC I don't think. OEM boards rarely offer that.
Click to expand...




Well, originally I was going to try this (partly the reason I doubled the system memory when I got the PC).

I would very much like to upgrade my old monitor and will at some point when I have the money. When I do, I will go to a bigger size, probably 17" or 19" (the current 15" is a bit of an eye strain at times).

Unfortunately with the monitor upgrade comes higher resolutions and more demand I guess on the vga card! Must admit though, if it worked (for the one game I play).....at least I would achieve a silent graphics card!:cool:
 
I guess I've always thought that using onboard to be the lowest of the low when it comes to performance.

Just thought that buying a cheap 512MB fanless card would still be much better than using the built in Intel graphics chipset....I may be wrong on this though!

At the moment I'm obviously still using my old Athlon XP2400 PC with it's Asus MX4000 128MB AGPx8 gfx card. Maybe the onboard Intel chipset on my 'new' PC using shared sys memory would be better than this? If that's the case, then I might try it.

Last time I used an onboard gfx chipset, it could use up to 4MB of the sys memory and I clearly remember how inadequate it was for almost anything apart from MS Word and what a wonderful experience it was to put in a dedicated gfx card (infact I bought 2.....a 4MB PCI gfx card and an 8MB PCI Voodoo2 accelerator card).....I recall it making a tremendous difference. I guess it's this experience that's put me off using onboard gfx ever since. I know things have moved on and maybe the Intel gfx chip could do the job for me.
 
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