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General discussion

Video Cards - General

Jan 28, 2004 10:28AM PST

I'm using a generic S3 VGA video card in a PC with a AMD Athlon XP 2400+ processor, an MSI KT2 Combo MB with 256k PC133 DIM SDRAM. I'm cheap so I use a 56K modem. The machine overall doesn't seem as fast as I would have expected having moved up from an AMD K6-2 200MZ processor and a Socket A instead of a Socket 7 Motherboard. I changed to WIN 98 SE too.

What should I expect if I upgrade to a better video card? I don't play games or edit videos or anything like that. What I do use the PC for is trading in the futures markets and pulling up lots of financial graphs with calculated indicators.

Any thoughts?

Discussion is locked

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Re:Video Cards - General. What year did those cards come out?
Jan 28, 2004 10:39AM PST

Besides ANY video card could handily quadruple the display speed that you find made in the last year or even two, others note the Pest and Parasite issues. Hint, these are not VIRUS.

Nothing indicates you have such, but I'll note http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6132-0.html?forumID=32&threadID=1313&start=0 anyway, just in case.

Worth noting is that if you recycled the hard disk, then you keep one of the speed anchors as you moved up the machine's CPU. The hard disk is same speed, so your bottlenecks are likely in what you kept.

Bob

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Re:Re:Video Cards - General. What year did those cards come out?
Feb 8, 2004 1:33PM PST

I got lost and couldn't find my way back for a while.

The video card is 1999 model and I am using an old 4.1 Gig Western Digital HDD. I think it's 16.5 Mz or 33 DMA access. I suppose that slows things down some. I also have a second drive attached, a new Maxtor 80 Gig DMA 133Mz comnnect with an 80 wire ribbon cable which I've just been using as a backup. The old 4.1 drve uses the regular 40 wire ribbon cable.

Should I junk the 4.1 Gig and run the 80 Gig as my primary ya think? I'm using old PC133 memory instead of the newer memory since I'm using a MB that can take either SDRAM DIM's or the newer stuff but can't mix them.

So should I bother to upgrade the video card? If so, upgrade to what kid of card?

Generally where are the bottlenecks in a desktop PC?

Thanks,
Hank

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Re:Re:Re:Video Cards - General. What year did those cards come out?
Feb 11, 2004 3:04PM PST

Are you guys still out there?

Hank

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Have the same board
Jan 28, 2004 12:22PM PST

My machine runs sweet. The hard drive as Bob mentioned could be keeping the performance down. You should see a HUGE differance from the K6-2.
If the improvement you were seeking is the internet, consider broadband.

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Re:Video Cards - General
Jan 28, 2004 4:46PM PST

Are you pulling the datas from online or from your harddrive? Dialup is still dialup; faster cpu is not going to help that much in my opinion. Maybe another 256k ram may also help. Just my $.02