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Kinda a dumb question...

S

starhawk

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 4, 2004
Messages
8,908
OK, I think I know the answer to this... but...

I've got a Compaq SR2173WM. Graphics by default are integrated, namely nVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE. No idea what the VRAM setting is on that. I wanted nicer graphics (okay, less bad) and I've always been told that integrated graphics are the worst possible performance option, so I plunked my spare gfx card in. It's an ATi Radeon X600 128MB that someone up and gave me... dell oem to boot. At least it's PCIe x16. (I did say 'less bad'!)

Here's the problem... I'm trying to run Linux on this box, and the computer seems to be hell-bent on dumping the sound through the DVI port (which it thinks is HDMI) on the graphics card. That doesn't go very far, since the card is attached to my monitor with a DVI->VGA adapter. So I got no sound on that box right now.

I've got two choices: muck around with the audio till it recognizes the mobo chip (which probably means installing Realtek's linux driver, which I can handle), or downgrade to the GeForce thing that's built in.

For the record, my games tend to involve DOSBox so I'm not exactly worried about the performance, but I would like to be able to watch Youtube without it stuttering or generally effing up. (At least, in ways not related to my 'Net connection...)

So what I want to know is, how much better (if any) is the X600 over that GeForce chip?
 
I googled your dilemma and found a comparison of a x300 vs the 6150LE and even the x300 gave the user better performance. I would say the x600 would be considerably better for your performance.
 
you should be able to disable whatever audio that is in the device manger. and an X600 is so slow thats its basically irrelevant for modern games if that is you interest. not to mention your single core cpu and 1gb of ram will not really allow you to play modern games anyway. also that cheap oem psu is probably worn out after 6 years so trying to run any discrete card my finally kill it. those psus rarely make it this long even without powering a video card. so I recommend you just stick with your onboard gpu since you are not really going to accomplish much anyway going to the X600.
 
Funny that you mention the PSU. I just swapped it out. I'm pretty sure that what killed the last one (which, when I looked *carefully* inside, had three bulging caps) was when I unplugged it last night :eek: before that it was fine. Today it was dead as nails.

...also, I'm running Linux on this box (Puppy). I think you may have missed that in my original post...

...and I forgot to mention, I upgraded it to 2gb with an extra RAM stick. I tried to give it 4gb (2x2gb) and it beeped at me because it only accepts max 1gb sticks.
 
both of them are absolute crap.

afaik, those cards dont even support hardware acceleration of videos so playing hd videos and stuff could become very laggy.

heck you could probably find atleast 10x better gpu for > $20 imo
 
raclimj said:
afaik, those cards dont even support hardware acceleration of videos so playing hd videos and stuff could become very laggy.

heck you could probably find atleast 10x better gpu for > $20 imo
Click to expand...
Yup, both of them are able to play DVDs and that's about it. Anything HD related isn't going to fly, that means Youtube is probably going to stutter since it will be using only the CPU for video decoding.

Pick up a more modern card, you can easily find one less then $50 that will actually do HD video.
 
That is one old computer, nice to see that you can put it so some use.

What made you go for Puppy Linux?
I am sure other Linux distors support the ACL888 on your board.
 
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