I am building a new PC for the sole reason of browsing and some DVD/CD ripping. The only thing I kept from the last build is the modem and the Radeon 9600 PRO 125 8x card. Games will probably never be played but what is one was, is this Radeon card garbage? The new build is AMD 2.6 with 3 GB RAM
The 9600 Pro was a budget card even when new, and it was new almost five years ago. For a start a new PC won't have an AGP slot, so you can't use it anyway.
For CD/DVD riping, this card is total overkill I use a 16MB VooDoo 3 card on one PC and that has no problems with DVD/CD rips. The main problem is as sammorris stated, that the new motherboard will not have an AGP slot. This one is $50: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102726 How much are you willing to spend on a video card? It will not be the most crucial component. Really, the most important would be your HDD and DVDRW drive. Next would be RAM, but just enough to keep everything going. With XP 512MB would be enough. IF you are going to use bundled software (Nero, Ulead etc...) then it starts getting more resource hungry. For instance, I use DVD Decrypter for DVDs and Deepburner for CDs. I haven't done a CD rip in ages... I think I used ISOBuster? For burning I use ImgBurn. All these apps don't require much from your system. I can run them all on that same PC that has the Voodoo3 video card and 700MHz CPU The HD 3650 is reasonably priced and should allow to you be able to play most games if you ever decide to play a game. If this is too much money, maybe look for a 2600xt which should run around $30. Going cheaper than this otherwise, you are not really upgrading your 9600pro. Actually, the 2600xt would run many games fine as well and would be a huge improvement over the 9600 pro.
Unless you use GPU encodes, in which case a good graphics card is worth having. However, for actual DVD rips, rather than transcodes, I don't know if there's anything that can actually do that.
That is great! Now I have to buy a new card. The Asus M2A-VM I bought has onboard graphics. Will this suit me fine since games/watching movies is a non issue? Will this effect what I see on the internet? BTW, thanks for the help guys.
Just checked the manual, it has onboard Radeon X 1250 based graphics, will that get me by? What is the diff, in PCI and PCI 16? I am at New Egg looking around and just wanted to know.
Unless you play games or watch High-Definition Video, onboard graphics will be fine. PCI is the old generic method of attaching devices - network cards, sound cards, graphics cards, you name it. It is very outdated (15 years old or more) AGP was its successor, solely for Graphics cards, and came in 2x, 4x and 8x speed. It was phased out about 4 years ago. PCI and AGP's replacement was PCI express, available in 1x, 4x, and 16x, and it worked for all types of device - Graphics, sound, network, and so on. However, unlike AGP where there was one slot, with two different styles - 2x and 4x original which used one voltage, and the newer 4x and 8x, which used a different one. (This confusion fried many a graphics card), PCI express all shares the same connection, so anything marked PCI express will work if it fits - this is because 1x, 4x and 16x slots are different sizes. Amazingly enough though, you can still put a tiny 1x device in the first bit of a 16x slot if you wish, and it will work. There are other complexities regarding the actual speed of a 16x slot under certain conditions, but there's no real need to discuss that as you're not using it
Thanks so much sammorris, you are a great help. I am thinking of getting a Radeon 4650 just for the heck of it. I have about 60 bucks left over and would like to throw it at the PC. Do you know of any other older cards that might be good. Maybe something I could get used on eBay? Are used cards ok?
I see no reason to buy used as new stuff for the same price is so much faster than the old stuff, you don't really save much money. An HD4650 would be miles better than either the 9600 or 6150, and would allow you to play some games if you wanted, and on top of that, make your PC fully functional for HD video playback.
