I have a POS DEll Inspiron 2400. It is about three years old. Its a
long story but I can't afford to upgrade. The integrated video is the
Intel Extreme (ha ha ha.. cough) 82845G. It has 1 gigabyte system ram
and a P4 2.4 GHz CPU though. It has one PCI slot free.

Can I buy a PCI graphics card and use that instead? Will te system
know to disable the crap 82845G? I looked in the BIOS but I didn't see
an option to disable the onboard video there. I don't see a newer
BIOS version on the Dell website either.

I'd love to be able to use something other than this 82845G.

Thank you for your time.


---
Nate

Previously Nate <Conservative.Nate (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
Strictly speaking, disabling the on-board VGA is not needed, since
a system can well support two cards. However I can not promise
you this will work. Side note: Are there PCI VGA's still on the market?

Any specific reason?

Arno

On Apr 20, 9:29 pm, Arno Wagner <m... (AT) privacy (DOT) net> wrote:
Well I used to be into gaming a bit and even on some older game like
Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 there are slowdowns. I might try some other
games but I am afraid to.

I was wondering about the following:

http://www.copystars.com/evga_128_p1..._3834_prd1.htm

EVGA Geforce MX4000 PCI 128MB DDR VGA S-Video Retail


Vendor
EVGA

Key Features
Minimum System Requirements N/A
Video Memory Installed 128MB
Device Type Video Card
System Memory Required N/A
Video Input N/A
Video Output VGA + S-Video
2D/3D Features N/A
API Supported N/A
Package Type Retail
Qty per Carton N/A
Manufacturer Warranty 2 years
Multiple Monitors Supported N/A
RAMDAC Clock Speed 400MHz
Interface Type PCI
Gross Weight N/A
Graphics Processor GeForce MX 4000
OS Compliant N/A
Video Compression Standards N/A


Detail Specifications
Performance
-NVIDIA GeForce MX 4000
-250 MHz GPU
-350 MHz RAMDAC
Memory
-128 MB, 64 bit DDR
-400 MHz (effective)
-3.2 GB/s Memory Bandwidth
Interface
-PCI 2.1
-VGA, S-Video
Resolution Refresh
-240 Hz Max Refresh Rate
-2048 x 1536 x 32bit x 60 Hz Max Analog
Requirements
-Minimum of a 250 Watt power supply.
Other Features
-nView Multi-Display Technology
Weight - 1.00 lbs
Manufacturer Warranty - 2 year

Previously Nate <Conservative.Nate (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
Even for these Games, AGP is the minimum for smooth graphics.
The problem is that a lot of textures are loaded into the card.
PCI, with its theoretical maximum bandwidth of approx. 130MB/s
is just too slow for that. In fact the on-board graphic may be
faster than a PCI card, since it uses the memory bus and not
the likely slower PCI bus.

Sorry.

Arno