So, I know nothing about hardware... RE: VisionTek Xtasy 9200SE PCI

[runincircles]

Hello all,

I hope you will tolerate my inexperience with hardware and video cards.

I have a eMachines t3092 Desktop PC, the specs for this model are as follows:

AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Processor
512MB PC2700 DDR Memory
Graphics processor-- NVIDIA GeForce 4MX Integrated Graphics with 64MB Shared Memory
Audio output-- Integrated Sound card
OS provided-- Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

I recently purchased a VisionTek Xtasy 9200SE 128MB DDR PCI (VGA,TV out,DVI) because it was a great price ($19.99). Supposedly, the integrated graphics takes 64MB of my ram and that there is an 8x AGP slot available on my board. People have told me that AGP is the better graphics card but I don't really do any hardcore gaming. I have also been told that this PCI VisionTek card that I just got would be much better than my integrated graphics.

So I guess here's my question. Considering my computer and that I have an integrated graphics card...what benefits would I have installing this new PCI card? Or would there be no noticeable difference. Does anybody know where I can find steps to correctly install the PCi card (if you guys recommend I do so) without causing conflicts?

Thanks so much,
runincircles

 

[paparazi]

runincircles
Integrated Geforce4 MX440, sounds like you must have an NVIDIA nForce2-G (nForce IGP+nForce2 MCP)based motherboard which, as you point out, uses onboard memory but I think that this can be set higher than 32mb in the bios.

Generally installing a seperate graphics card is always superior to onboard because the card has it's own memory resources and is nearly always more powerful.

It's a bit differant in this case, the onboard Nvidia GF4 MX440 and Radeon 9200SE are very close performers and the PCI bus of the 9200SE isn't the fastest interface for a graphics card.
Still, I think it's probably going to be beneficial having the seperate card but only by a slight margin and of course some system memory will be freed up at the same time, every little helps.

Martin

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[micker377]

Look at your manual to see if there are any jumpers that have to be reset to switch to a video card. If nothing is mentioned, just put the card in and see if the computer recognizes it. My son-in-law just put a card in his computer (came with on-board). When he rebooted, the computer just asked for the "driver" disk. Installed OK(thank goodness - he didn't have to call me!), and runs perfectly.

 

[runincircles]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the replies!

I actually did install the card like you guys said and it didn't work out so well. I disabled the card and installed the PCI card pretty easily. It's just that my computer became choppy and the graphics were a bit slower. So I opted against installing this card - so onto the selling block it goes!

Thanks so much!
runincircles

 

[addy]

I disabled the card and installed the PCI card pretty easily. It's just that my computer became choppy and the graphics were a bit slower. "

Did you install the latest drivers correctly and uninstall any previous drivers?

The 9200 isn't a great performer but shouldn;t really be worse than the onboard graphics. You probably need to uninstall any NVidia display drivers, then use a free piece of software called DriverCleaner to thoroughly remove them, then install the latest ATI catalyst drivers.