Dell Dimension 3000 - Upgrade with FX 5200

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Although my research says that the best PCI cards are the FX 5600 and FX 5700LE, I have been unable to find them anywhere, including eBay. :( I have been able to find the FX 5200, 128 MB. Cost is approximately $90 CDN. I would be interested in comments as to whether installing the 5200 would result in a significant improvement over the existing Intel integrated graphics. I have been advisaed to stay away from Radon cards for this particular PC.

Any feedback would be appreciated. :)
 
it's not like any graphics card running in a pci interface would really boost your performance. in fact, the limitations of the pci bus often result in the add-in card lowering performance when compared to the integrated graphics, which use a faster bus. i advise against trying to mess with your dell to add performance. even if you were able to get a graphics card properly installed and working, the performance returns would be dissapointing at best.
 
I must disagree with you zephead. most onboard video cards suck... simply put...

and hear comes the reason...

THEY USED SHARED SYSTEM MEMORY.

if your system is running 256MB ram and you have a onboard video with 64MB ram then guess what..

you effectively have 256-64MB of memory that the system can use.

Here is what you do.... disable the onboard video and install that PCI video card, simply put any will boost your gaming performance.

I will look around and see if i can find the one you are looking for. i will post you a link when i find it, hopefully in a couple min....

secondly... the onboard video that HP uses i know will not play most new games.. heck it wouldn't even play Call of duty till i installed an actual pci video card, i have seen that the drivers for onboard graphics suck... but of course this is my opinion....

Did they make a PCI version of that card???? i cant find it if they did.
 
I'm pretty sure this is the best pci card that you might possibly get a hold of.
http://amamax.com/ge56pciwddrd1.html
But another member here ordered on and still hadn't gotten it more than a month later, so he/she canceled the order. So, I'm not sure if they actually do have them, or if they are just a crappy site.

There was a prototype 256mb fx5900 pci card, but there were only prototypes AFAIK.

A 5700le would be ok, if you can get a 128bit memory inteface one, most are 64bit.

The safest bet/most available pci card now is the bfg 5500OC pci card (256mb). I think it's probably pretty decent.
Here's a link just to show the card.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=6981723&type=product&id=1099392683347

Here's another thread that may be of help, a dell 2400 owner looking for a pci card.
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfo...ssage.id=119077&view=by_date_ascending&page=1
Don't forget the second page.
 
urbandragon said:
I must disagree with you zephead. most onboard video cards suck... simply put...

and hear comes the reason...

THEY USED SHARED SYSTEM MEMORY.

I have to agree. I had an HP with on board video and man... was it slow. I bought a ATI Radeon 7000 64MB PCI, which wasn't the best, but it was decent enough that I can do some basic gaming and video.

cT
 
i know onboard video is lackluster, and that is shares system memory. i was saying that the data bus between the northbridge and onboard graphics controller (usually the same chip anyways) is much faster than the pci data bus. so perhaps a better gpu on a pci card would suffer from the pci performance bottleneck. i've seen many upgrades go both ways, so your point is well taken.
 
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