Vista - help with new graphics card please

hi,

my fx5200 128mb recently (i know its pretty crappy) finally broke down,
so now i have no aero glass.

my 5200 got me a score of 2.0 for "Desktop performace for windows aero"
and a 2.5 for "3D business and gaming performance". I plan on getting a
new computer next year so im not going to go crazy upgrading half my
computer as it has no pci-x or agp slots, so I'm wondering what type of
score i would get with a fx5500 256mb or maybe a 6200 128mb.

Thanks


--
rneys
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Hi,

Why does the score matter? What you need is a card that functions the way
you want it to. People place way too much stock in performance scoring, it's
more important that your system be adequate for your computing needs. You
stated you don't want to put a lot of money into this machine, so other than
aero is there anything that you need that much graphics processing for?

Just an FYI, but I use an ATI 9600 AGP w/128MB on the system I ran for beta
testing, and it scores 4.0. With a PCI slot, you may not be able to achieve
much more than a 2 due to restrictions in the rate of data transfer
regardless of the quality of the card.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

"rneys" <rneys.2muyrj@DoNotSpam.com> wrote in message
news:rneys.2muyrj@DoNotSpam.com...
>
> hi,
>
> my fx5200 128mb recently (i know its pretty crappy) finally broke down,
> so now i have no aero glass.
>
> my 5200 got me a score of 2.0 for "Desktop performace for windows aero"
> and a 2.5 for "3D business and gaming performance". I plan on getting a
> new computer next year so im not going to go crazy upgrading half my
> computer as it has no pci-x or agp slots, so I'm wondering what type of
> score i would get with a fx5500 256mb or maybe a 6200 128mb.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> --
> rneys
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> rneys's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/member.php?userid=22806
> View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=696802
>
> http://forums.techarena.in
>

No Nvidia 5000 series will give you Aero. You will need a card in the 6000
series or higher.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

"rneys" <rneys.2muyrj@DoNotSpam.com> wrote in message
news:rneys.2muyrj@DoNotSpam.com...
>
> hi,
>
> my fx5200 128mb recently (i know its pretty crappy) finally broke down,
> so now i have no aero glass.
>
> my 5200 got me a score of 2.0 for "Desktop performace for windows aero"
> and a 2.5 for "3D business and gaming performance". I plan on getting a
> new computer next year so im not going to go crazy upgrading half my
> computer as it has no pci-x or agp slots, so I'm wondering what type of
> score i would get with a fx5500 256mb or maybe a 6200 128mb.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> --
> rneys
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> rneys's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/member.php?userid=22806
> View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=696802
>
> http://forums.techarena.in
>

/Richard Urban/ said:

> No Nvidia 5000 series will give you Aero. You will need a card in the
> 6000 series or higher.

I must respectfully disagree, as a 128Mb FS 5200 here - with a
22" monitor being driven by the 9.6.8.5 driver - does Aero nicely.

The only deficiency that I have spotted is the ability to change slide
show themes. No games have been tested, but for solitaire. Rating is 2.0.

Upgrading an AGP card is not money well spent, now that PCI-E is
replacing that standard.

Just don't upgrade to the latest drivers or you will loose Aero. The 5000
series is no longer supported by Nvidia under Vista.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User


"dev" <dev@null.invallid> wrote in message
news:uJkGzbaXHHA.1300@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> /Richard Urban/ said:
>
>> No Nvidia 5000 series will give you Aero. You will need a card in the
>> 6000 series or higher.
>
> I must respectfully disagree, as a 128Mb FS 5200 here - with a
> 22" monitor being driven by the 9.6.8.5 driver - does Aero nicely.
>
> The only deficiency that I have spotted is the ability to change slide
> show themes. No games have been tested, but for solitaire. Rating is
> 2.0.
>
> Upgrading an AGP card is not money well spent, now that PCI-E is
> replacing that standard.

Well thanks for the responses guys...

but still this is just a temporary replacement for my pc. with the
fx5200 aero ran fine on 1280x1024 except it lags when i mouse over the
icons in the start menu and i can't use the media centre because it it
lags as well.

just curious how is the graphics card score calculated/does overclocked
cards give a greater score?


--
rneys
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=696802

http://forums.techarena.in

On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 02:20:10 +0530, rneys <rneys.2mw1ng@DoNotSpam.com>
wrote:

>
>Well thanks for the responses guys...
>
>but still this is just a temporary replacement for my pc. with the
>fx5200 aero ran fine on 1280x1024 except it lags when i mouse over the
>icons in the start menu and i can't use the media centre because it it
>lags as well.
>
>just curious how is the graphics card score calculated/does overclocked
>cards give a greater score?

How much time you got?

I don't want to turn this newsgroup into a overly technical group
where many readers have their eyes glazed over due to excessive
technobabble.

There are many web sites that go off the deep end testing graphic
cards and other hardware to the nth degree. I'm sure with little
effort you can find several that drone on for 15-20 web pages or more
giving enough data to choke a horse on just about anything you're
interested on sticking in a Windows box.

A couple quick tips. Even if you're not a serious game player,
generally cards designed for gamers and serious game playing are also
a good choice for regular users.

Surprise, how much memory is on your graphic card isn't super
important. What really matters is how fast the operating system can
communicate with the card. That depends on the bus speed, both the
front side bus and the design of the graphic card and what your
motherboard supports.

Right now the fastest are based on PCI Express x16. If your MB
supports that, that's what you want. Also be aware many, probably most
graphic cards don't have "tuned" Vista drivers yet. Your lucky if you
can find beta Vista drivers for graphic cards at this point.

Again, while it may seem to be some issue with your graphic card it
also could be Windows eating up system resources trying to do
something behind the scenes you're not aware of. You can get an idea
by looking in Task Manager, check the processes tab to see what
Windows is up to, could surprise you. Also Windows can slow to a
crawl if it is trying to talk to some device, like a USB external
drive and for various reasons can't, Windows will keep trying and eat
up lots of resources in the trying which can slow your system to a
crawl. Symptoms are a non responsive keyboard or mouse, slow screen
refreshing, etc..