Old Gateway & New Vid Card ???

[JCB]

Got a guy that wants a new vid card for his old Gateway PII 450. It's got some funky ole Nvidia agp card in it now.

I was thinking 'bout one of those Gforce 5200's or a Radeon 9100 for a cheap upgrade. Anybody know of any compatiblity issues w/ these?

[BipolarBill]

I don't recommend it. That old 440LX may burn up with a new video card. Besides, the P2 450 will be a bottleneck and he won't see any real improvement.

He really needs to upgrade the motherboard/CPU/RAM.

[JCB]

Just the opposite. A new vid card would burn up in this mobo. Turned out the original card is an old 3.3v TNT RIVA. So, it's a no go on this mobo.

[bushmaster]

Not just the opposite, Bill was referring to the 440LX chipset which is on the mobo.

[Peter M]

What are you guys talking about?

The 440LX is a 2x AGP chipset, and Radeon 9100 and 9200 are still 2x AGP compatible alright.

I recommend you skip the GeForce idea for power consumption reasons, but your system will be fine with one of the above Radeons. Note that the 9600 series no longer do 2x AGP.

[BipolarBill]

It's a waste of money anyway, Peter - unless he's just planning for the future. That P3 450 just can't feed the card fast enough.

As an example, I had a GF2 GTS in my brother's P3 1000. MOHAA Spearhead averaged about 10 FPS at high detail. Switched to a GF4 Ti4200 and it stayed the same - very small improvements. I swapped out the guts for an Athlon 1700+ on a VIA board with DDR and now he runs high detail 40 FPS and he can just play the game.

[Peter M]

Sure that ... that's why I recommended fairly low ended cards. Stepping up from a RivaTNT will make a massive difference even on that 450 MHz CPU, wouldn't you think?

[BipolarBill]

Yah - a TNT2 would be a big improvement. A GTS/Radeon 7500 would probably be all that it could handle though.

[JCB]

Thanks guys. I'm learning more everyday. I was just worried about burning up a newer card at 3.3v.