PC Pals Forum

Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: Mac on April 25, 2006, 10:07

Title: New Video Card, what to choose?
Post by: Mac on April 25, 2006, 10:07

I have an older PIII 1.0GHz system with 512MB of RAM and an NVIDIA video card with only 32MB of RAM.

The motherboard is an MSI MS-6309.

I think that a new video card might improve some of the images I see so I would like to know just how big the video card should be. What should I choose, 64, 128 or 256 MB ?

If I decide to change the motherboard to be able to use a dual core Intel P4 processor and dual channel memory what would you recommend to make the change easy and so that I can retain the present case, USB keyboard, USB mouse and 18" monitor which all match each other?

Title: New Video Card, what to choose?
Post by: sam on April 25, 2006, 10:44

depends what you wanna do the more video ram you have the better if playing games or image editing but apart from that do you need it? probably not.

Title: New Video Card, what to choose?
Post by: Mac on April 25, 2006, 12:14

It is really just in order to improve the video quality. I don't play any games on a computer. Sport is a different matter.

What about the motherboard? Is there a replacement which will fit the existing board's layout without doing too many modifications?

Which motherboard manufacturer would you recommend?

Title: New Video Card, what to choose?
Post by: Sandra on April 25, 2006, 14:07

I would just replace the GFX card if youre happy with the performance of the rest of your pc Mac.
A 128mb card should do ok for what you want.

I have a 128mb DDR 8xAGP card in my AMD Athlon XP 2100 + and I cant see any difference when playing dvds on the same monitor type and size as I get on my new 3.6 intel pc with a 16x PCI-e 256 DDR3 card.
No doubt if I was playing games on it I would do.

Title: Thanks!
Post by: Mac on April 25, 2006, 15:22

Thanks Sandra, I had a look around the local computer shop and 128MB seems to be fairly standard.

This old computer has worked well for years, so I thought to give it a treat. Might put some good quality RAM in and see if that improves things too.

:thanks:

Title: New Video Card, what to choose?
Post by: Mac on April 27, 2006, 11:07

Might do this the other way around. Pick the very best NVIDIA Quadro video card and then find the right motherboard and processors. Then I can have the three monitor set-up I always wanted to have.

NVIDIA recommend four mother-boards.