WWTBAM Bored

The monitor on my home PC was flaking out (it would intermittantly lose power) so I bought a new 19" widescreen LCD monitor last night. Only now I find that the integrated graphics chip in the computer (VIA S3G UniChrome IGP) won't support the optimum 1440 x 900 widescreen resolution; it looks awful at 1024 x 768.

So I guess I need to buy a new graphics card. Anyone have any recommendations for something reasonable yet economical? I don't want to pump too much into this 4-year-old PC, but something that would support new games (and Google Earth) would be nice. And the new monitor has an input for DVI input, so I want a card that can support that, too.




Oh, and the built-in speakers in the new monitor are tinny little toys, so I'll probably keep the detached speakers that came with the PC, except that they plugged into the old monitor for their power, so I'll need to find a 12 V adaptor for those.

Too much jargon for me.

If I knew what you were talking about, I would, of course, have an opinion.

But..... I don't.

MarleysGh0st wrote:The monitor on my home PC was flaking out (it would intermittantly lose power) so I bought a new 19" widescreen LCD monitor last night. Only now I find that the integrated graphics chip in the computer (VIA S3G UniChrome IGP) won't support the optimum 1440 x 900 widescreen resolution; it looks awful at 1024 x 768.

So I guess I need to buy a new graphics card. Anyone have any recommendations for something reasonable yet economical? I don't want to pump too much into this 4-year-old PC, but something that would support new games (and Google Earth) would be nice. And the new monitor has an input for DVI input, so I want a card that can support that, too.




Oh, and the built-in speakers in the new monitor are tinny little toys, so I'll probably keep the detached speakers that came with the PC, except that they plugged into the old monitor for their power, so I'll need to find a 12 V adaptor for those.

The best new video cards require a slot I'm sure you don't have on your motherboard unless you bought it within the last year or so. They also cost around $300.

I assume you have an AGP slot. If so, the ATI Radeon 9800 board is your best bet. They don't make them anymore, but you can find hundreds on eBay for $50-60.

If your monitor looks bad at 1024x768, it won't look a lot better at 11140x990. I would have gotten a better monitor.

peacock2121 wrote:Too much jargon for me.

If I knew what you were talking about, I would, of course, have an opinion.

No doubt.

So I'll translate it in words you can understand:

Marley is grumbling.

Take it from there!

Bob Juch wrote:If your monitor looks bad at 1024x768, it won't look a lot better at (1440)x990. I would have gotten a better monitor.

It's the mismatched aspect ratio that's really making it look bad--stretching a 1.33:1 setting to a 1.6:1 screen. I'm half tempted to take the 19" monitor back for a 17" monitor that matches the aspect ratio of my old one.

But I think I'll go with a new video card. From local store an not eBay, thanks.

Oh, and my PC has a PCI slot and and AGP2 slot.

There are lots of cards that you can pick up cheaply in the $25 to $50 range on Ebay. I recently bought an NVIDIA GEFORCE 5500 with 256Mb for about $30 and it works flawlessly. The ATI Radeon series cards also should work fine in your system. If your system supports AGP cards, I would try to get one as opposed to a PCI card. Get one with as much on-board memory as you can find within that price range. Your should be able to find a 128 Meg or 256 Meg card without a problem. There are other cards that will fit your bill, but these two series offer good performance at an economical price. Double check the specs for the cards in these series to make sure they can handle the resolution you need.

MarleysGh0st wrote:Oh, and my PC has a PCI slot and and AGP2 slot.

You can use the ATI Radeon 9800. That's what I use on my 25" HD monitor from Dell and it looks great. I can also output to my HDTV.

Power is also an issue for your new video card -- at least according to all the stuff I read 6 months ago when I was trying to decide to buy a new graphics card to go with my old cheapie PC. I wound up deciding to wait, because the comments seemed to indicate that my PC would need a separate power supply to run the kind of video card I wanted.

That may just be cause I was hanging out on the gaming freaks sites, and they were using some hyped up versions of the cards, I don't know.

But now that I've waited this long, I'll probably just wait until I can afford a whole new system.

mrkelley23 wrote:Power is also an issue for your new video card -- at least according to all the stuff I read 6 months ago when I was trying to decide to buy a new graphics card to go with my old cheapie PC. I wound up deciding to wait, because the comments seemed to indicate that my PC would need a separate power supply to run the kind of video card I wanted.

Yes, looking into this issue, I've noticed that, too. And the manufacturers don't make it easy by talking in the same terms, either. The card manufacturers all speak of requiring a certain size power supply in the computer, without disclosing the specific power requirements of the card. What good is knowing the PC's power, if they don't know how much power the other components are using? OTOH, HP doesn't disclose the size of its power supply; it just talks about being designed to supply a certain current to the slots. (From other sites selling replacement supplies, it appears that what I have is 300 watts.)

Since I don't want to upgrade my power supply, I think I'm going with an older, less powerful card that won't come close to the modern, top-of-the-line models but will make the new monitor more pleasing. As I said, I don't want to use an unknown seller through eBay or the web, but I found one advertised on Amazon, an XFX GeForce 6200 256MB GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X Video Card for $41.99 that should meet my needs. It's a four-year-old model, which nicely matches the age of my PC. It has the DVI output and it also uses a passive cooling system, so it'll be quiet.

I should have learned to be cautious after just having my work PC's monitor upgraded. That had problems with built-in graphics card, too. They gave me a new card that had a defective cooling fan on it that squealed like a banshee. They had to send it back in and I'm waiting for a replacement.

I'd have ordered the card last night, but I was already falling asleep before the end of Lost. I'll place the order tonight. And maybe order another book or two, while I'm at it.