Hi all, I need a little help here. I have just bought an E Machine 4260, Its spec is:- 3.06mhz, 512 meg memory, 160gig HDD, 16xDVD-RW,Windows XP(sp2) it has on board video, listed as NVIDEA GeForce MX 440 (Microsoft Corporation) It has an Intel Graphics Controler and when I list the graphics details it tells me that its Min Graphics memory is 8mb, Max Graphic memory is 64mb, Graphics memory in use is 12mb. I had a quick look in the BIOS and it is listed as AGP. My question is, I have a Sapphire Radeon 7000, graphics card, 64 mb, PCI connection,(it has to be because my E machine ONLY has PCI slots) can I use this card instead of the `on board` graphics card? would it improve my computers performance? if so, how do I go about doing it? Any help / advice would be gratefully received.
Yes, you can use it. No, it won't actually improve performance, but it might a bit, because you can (must) then disable the onboard video, which frees up the RAM it uses for Windows, instead of video. Go into device mangler, uninstall your current video device. Go into the BIOS and disable the onboard video. Save and shutdown. Open the box, put the card in a slot. Hook your monitor up to the new card. Start the computer. Install the drivers for the video card.
The thing is your OnBoard Graphics use an AGP Controller which has Much More Bandwidth than your PCI Slots do and the "NVIDEA GeForce MX 440" is Faster and produces Better Graphics than a Radeon 7000... The only performance Increase you Might gain Like RebootJim suggested is that because your On Board Graphics Borrows memory from your Ram that Ram will be Free for your system to use but since your Graphics are only Takeing up at Max 64mb the Performance Gain would be Minimal and at the Expence of your Graphics.... If your System had an AGP Slot and you had an AGP Video Card then i would suggest that you use it but since it isn"t and you don"t I suggest that you leave it the way it is..... What sucks about your System is if you are into any Major Gameing you will not be able to Do any of it because there is no AGP Slot or PCI-Express Slot so you will not be able to install a Video Card good enough to do any Gameing..... I supose if you are into Gameing you could in the Future Upgrade your Motherboard to one with an AGP Slot or PCI-Express Slot and then Install a Good Graphics Card...You could get a Motherboard that supports your CPU and has an AGP slot for under $75 if you installed it yourself.... Cheers
Hi all, Thanks for the replies, I think I will leave the setup as it is, seeing that it will not gain me much. I will condider buying a new mother board sometime in the future. I do not play `graphics hungry `games on my computer, only less graphic users such as Risk II, Conquest, Chess, and others of that type, so it is not a major problem to me. Can you suggest which mother board I could consider buying in the future? P.S. I live in the U.K.
