PCI Cards That Work With Vista Basic

[Jody Thornton]

My system is an HP xw8200 Workstation (nice dual-CPU machine actually). My PCI-e slot is pooched though (was ever since I received it second hand). I used to run Windows XP x64 Edition with an nVidia Geforce 6200 PCI card. For workstation use this was just fine.

Then I moved to Vista x64 Ultimate. I only use Basic and not Aero. Drivers are included for my nVidia card and are also available on Windows Update, but the card leaves artifacts when moving windows around, and has a jittery behaviour. There is a way to make the card work perfectly (even in Aero), and that's by going into the Bios and defeating the memory remapping feature. But then Vista is only limited to 4 gb of RAM, and that's a shame.

So now I am using a Radeon 9200 Pro PCI card, and I accomplish this by using XP x64 drivers from the Catalyst 6.4 series (upgrade to the next revision and you get BSODs on shutdown). These drivers work in Windows Basic and there are no artifacts, but the acceleration of menus and visual web content seems slow.

Are there any good working PCI cards for Vista, for just workstation use and for Basic only? It need not support Aero (if it does, fine; but it's not a requirement)

I anticipate your responses. Cheers All!

Jody

 

[mdiemer]

I wish I had an answer for you, as I also need a basic card that will work in Vista, and not give me Display Driver Failures, which have been driving me to distraction (so far, not to drinking). So, I'm seconding Jody's question! Is there a rock solid, reasonably-priced card that will fit the bill? I have to vote against Nvidia, but that may just be because I have an older card (8400GS).

 

[Patonb]

Any 8 series Nvidia or 4xxx AMD (ATI) or better.

Newegg has 3
Newegg.ca - Computer Hardware, Video Cards & Video Devices, Desktop Graphics Cards, PCI, Radeon HD 5000 series, GeForce 9 series, GeForce 8 series

That's the Canadian site, but the US site is the same.

 

[Jody Thornton]

It ends up I got my hands on a Radeon 7000 card, and just used the Lenovo driver for Server 2008. That works well.

 

[Jody Thornton]

I would take it that an nVidia 9400 PCI would work though right? I have a chance to buy one, but I'm hoping he'll come down in price.

(Edit: For $41.00 he has an nVidia 5200 GeForce. I wonder if it's sufficient)
(Edit # 2: For $100.00 I bought the GeForce 9400. It does work with aplomb)