High end PCI..just for fun.

enlightenedby42

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jan 19, 2005
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So, got offered a few bucks to fix up an old Dell Dimension 2300 over the break. Integrated graphics, Celeron 1.8, 256 mb of, get this, PC133 SDRAM (!). So, doing the best I can, I manage to get the 'Egg to overnight me a PNY FX5500 PCI gpu and a 512 mb stick of memory. Thus emerges the reason this is in Video Cards.. :D
Anyway, in researching this I found that a few people had asked about this before, and info was a bit scant so here's my contribution to humanity:
-Installation painless, found that Windows would hang up during installation with both video cards attatched, though this might have been a fluke. Fixed simply by removing GPU for Windows installation and reseating once Microsoft has assimilated the machine completely.
-Get everything up an running, and decide just for shits and giggles to run 3DMark 2001 SE to see if my buddy's $80 was a total waste or not. Suprisingly, all the tests ran fairly smoothly! Performance was far better than expected: 3739 3dmarks. Was rather shocked to see that it even ran completely! Frame rates dipped to 8-10 during Nature but never bottomed out. Not too shabby.
-Was also fixing quite a virus and malware collection accumulated by inexperienced users, so I did not compare to integrated side by side as it would have involved using the computer in that state.
So, if you're unfortunate enough to be stuck with a Dell rig from the "strings and tin cans" era, and Dell wasn't kind enough to give you an AGP port, this is a pretty nice little upgrade. Sure, you won't be playing FEAR, but perfect for ramen noodle budget softcore gaming.
Just to share. I need to get the parts for my new rig, as people who have Opteron 170's sitting in motherboards rather than envelopes are likely not bored enough to post results on something like this.
 
It's always fun to mess around with old stuff... that rig would play the original CS and DoD just fine!
 
You DO realize, of course - against all odds - they released a GeForce 6200 in PCI format, right?

That'd be..ohhh...THREE...times the performance of the card you used?
 
Yes, the ol "which original PCI card is the most powerful?" topic comes up a lot. Even so, not everyone knows that you can indeed get a 6200 in PCI form. It's made by 3D Fuzion.
 
Yeah, I know. Same price too. Sadly it needed to get done by Christmas and I couldn't find the 6200 in stock anywhere. I guess its kind of a rarity. Was aware of it though, and did try. Would have been WAY better. Still, I was reasonably impressed with what I managed to get ahold of. The moral of the story is really that it IS in fact a worthy upgrade if you're unfortunate enough even to be considering it.
 
Chumbo is the only place I know that even lists the 6200 PCI. I signed up to recieve an email when then get some back in stock 2 weeks ago, but haven't heard anything yet. I'm going to be upgrading a Compaq with similar specs for someone, but luckily it has an agp slot.
 
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