so im running vista ultimate and i have an intel P4 2.60ghz processor 256mb 333mhz stick of ram and a 512mb 266mhz stick of ram and i have an old ati radeon 7500 64mb video card, i was wondering if i can over clock the video card to 128mb or possibly 256mb and as for teh ram i want to over clock the 512mb stick to 333mhz and after thats all done i wanted to over clock the cpu up a bit just so everythin is running smooth now so far what i know about over clocking is it has something to do with the bios and changin gsettings but i dont know how to get to that or anything on how to change it and what to change it too..the main thing i want overclocked right now is my videocard so i can run aero glass on vista, thats the whole reason i wanted vista ultiamte cause it has aero glass and then i installed it and it says i need a 128mb video card for it to work, huge piss off and i dont wanna fork out 180$ for a new video card Thanks -Ben
Not possible. You'll need to purchase a new video card with that amount of physical memory. Clock speeds are not applicable to the amount of memory a card was designed and built with. Overclocking your 512MB stick may also not be possible without jeopardizing the 256 stick already running at 333.....though your motherboard will not run them both at separate frequencies. They'll default to the slowest of the two. You have a total of 768MB running at 266 Mhz. Best option....replace both sticks with the same FSB rating of your CPU. Overclocking your video card doesn't apply to being able to run Vista's Aero Glass interface. That has to do with your card's ability to support and run DirectX 9. The Radeon 7500 supports only DirectX 8 and below.
ok well i took my video card out and im running the onboard videocard right now and still no aero glass effect, it there any way i can force enable the glass effect?..cause since it came out just after windwos codename longhorn was done with and the name vista was created the glass effect worked on my computer so from the end of longhorn and all of the vista beta i had aero glass but then as soon as it got released it says my videocard isnt good enough for it but i know it works flawless cause iv been using it for about 4 or 5 years now.. maybe i should post this in the vista questions forum.. -Ben
oh, also i have my videocard out and i can see 8 RAM chips on it, same ones on a DDR stick of ram or a PC133 stick, so i was wondering if i took those ram chips off the videocard(they are surface mounded but i know how to remove chips, i do it with xbox's all the time) and the replace it with the ram from a stick of ram do you think it would be faster or do they all use the same chip? these chips all says the same thing SAMSUNG 151 K4D64163HE-TC40 WHJEBBAI KOREA
Modifying your video card with other chips isn't going to increase the amount of available memory. If it were possible, you'd also have to alter the card's BIOS...and the memory interface I believe. Onboard video, particularly older boards, are not going to support Aero Glass. If you're using a motherboard that supports PC133 memory, then there's no chance what so ever, that the onboard video will use Aero. If Vista's done one thing...it's called for a massive upgrade in most, if not all older equipment. The bare min vid cards from Nvidia that will run Aero, are at least the 5000 series....the cards must support DirectX 9. However, seeing as you're using pretty old equipment...instead of banging your head against a wall trying to get it to work, you just might have to start saving up for a machine that will not give you any issues running Vista.
Windows Vista performs a hardware check on your system to see if it can handle the Aero Glass interface. If not, Vista shuts off Aero Glass. However, you can use a trick to force Aero Glass on, as long as you’re using a WDDM-compliant video driver. In the Registry Editor (Start, Run, type regedit, and click OK), navigate to the following key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft Add a new subkey named DWM and then create a DWORD setting named EnableMachineCheck. Leave the value of this setting at 0, which disables Vista’s DWM-related hardware checking. Some caveats concerning this hack: * It does not work on all systems. * Even if it does work, it can make your system run extremely slow
