HP Pavilion a1600n onboard video or low level video card

[dar124]

I'm putting together a HP Pavilion a1600n PC for my mother in law. I've had the PC in my pile of PC's that were given to me and finally got some time to work on this to upgrade her old Dell PC. This PC is running W7 Pro with 3GB of memory and will be used for internet surfing, some word / power point work, streaming YouTube & Facebook videos and occasionally used by our 10yr old niece to do homework, etc.

My question is would the onboard video be better (since this PC was sold as a media center PC) or should I put in a small video card. I have a few cards taken out of other PC's laying around that I'll probably never use for anyone else.

Here's the few that I could quickly find.

ATI Radeon x300, PN 102A3341800 000003
128MB PCI-E GRAPHICS CARD, CN-0H3823-69702, P/N 102A2590401
NVIDIA - Video card AGP 64MB MS-8878 VER 130

I realize that these cards are all basic video cards, but would they have any benefit over the onboard video?? My thought is that they come with some memory so they wouldn't pull from the 3GB of memory in the PC?? If they're better than the onboard video any recommendations between the 3 listed??

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[misterbobby]

Why would a dedicated card be needed for basic pc use?

 

[dar124]

It really wouldn't be "needed", but I have these cards that I probably wouldn't use for someone that would need a video card. So I figured that they might be a slight upgrade over the onboard video.

 

[misterbobby]

It really wouldn't be "needed", but I have these cards that I probably wouldn't use for someone that would need a video card. So I figured that they might be a slight upgrade over the onboard video.

Just use the integrated video. Those cards range from poor to pure junk anyway and there is no benefit in fooling with one of them. Also that pc is 8 years old and if the power supply has not gone out yet then you could pretty much count on it happening if trying to power anything extra at this point.