system performance better with a graphics card???

[patrickp]

hi there,
i recently build a new system (pIII 800 EB,815epro solano mb,256mb pc 133 unbuffered,maxtor 40gb 5400 ata 66,win 98)
so far i am actually satisfied but whenever i play with systems like this in stores i have the feeling they are faster.
with playing i mean opening and running programs, checking controlpanels and even right clicking in the screen seems to go faster than on my system. on my system it just takes a little longer until the windows come up.
could the reason be that i am still using the 8mb onboard video and not an extra card?
would a card like a gforce 2 mx take the graphic rendering core off the processor to speed up system performance?

i tweaked the virtual memory to conservative swap= 1, on its own drive min/max=400 mb, cacheman is running, defrag regularly, norton is running sometimes to optimize the registry and fix some minor win probs but not monitoring all the time.
all the bios settings have been checked and on start up is only running cacheman, zonealarm,and pccillin poptrap.
what am i missing out here?
appreciate any suggestions, thanks patrick

[muno]

Heh, this might not be of any use but maybe they're cheating in the stores =)
Saying the computer on the table has this and that when in fact it has that-4 and this-4. You know, people think that 'ooh.. this celeron 667 is sooooo fast' when in fact inside the machine there's a p3-1,3GHz =)
-M

[CMonster]

Yes, the onboard video is draging the systemn down and you have too many programs running in the background.

[OuTpaTienT]

By all means, ditch the onboard video. A decent graphic card will help tremendously.

Unless your a gamer (I sense you're not) then you don't even need to spend much money. An MX, like you mentioned might be a good choice. But you could probably go even cheaper, and get a mainly 2D card. Even an old Matrox would probably be an improvement.

[patrickp]

hey thanks,
i've also read benchmarks of the 815epro, it shows much better performance without onboard video.
but where is the big difference between 2d and 3d, shouldn't 3d also render 2d good?
i've seen a gforce 2 mx/ 32mb for 59$


about the programs i'm running, shouldn't 256 mb ram be capable of taking it?

free physical memory is 133560 Kb
free gdi resources 71%
free user resources 69%

thanks everybody !

[lai918]

Go to download.com and get TweakUI. It modify ur registry and give faster perfomance to my machine. Just in case, backup ur registry before doing it.

[CMonster]

When it comes to running multiple programs it isn't always about how much memory you have but about CPU cycles - too many background programs steal the CPU's attention.