Old Dell C840 in a dock. What PCI video card to get? FX5500?

[MisterDNA]

So I got a broken Latitude C840 with a C/Dock II for $1 and managed to kick it in the nuts hard enough to work and it repaid me with a 1.8GHz P4, 1GB RAM and the best damn 15" display I have ever seen on a laptop. My problem is the display at home looks like crap over the analog port (with sexy signal loss and ghosting through the dock connector).

I'm looking for a PCI GPU. Not optimal, but that's all I've got to work with. I've heard some don't work so if anyone has experience with these particular systems and docks, I'd love to hear about it.

I want to stick with Nvidia cards since the internal GPU is Nvidia. It looks like my choices are:

FX5200
FX5500
FX5700 LE
6200

I have a feeling the FX5500 will be my likely option since I have read about people getting them to work properly. One guy fried two docks in the process with a no-name FX5500.

 

[The Real Zardoz]

Hi,

A wonderful system - I'm running a similar system now - except this system cost me well over AU$7k when I got it.. and that was with only 512MB RAM and the older 60GB drive... since upgraded a few bits... you can get a Ti4200 in the form of a Quadro4 700 which runs at slightly lower clocks for these things but they're a bit rare. You can also get a pair of batteries (new from Dell, they cost me under AU$200 for a pair, shipped) which will give you 4-5 hours in low power usage.

Which screen do you have on this? the 1600x1200 ultrasharp with the nice deep blacks? 14ms or something.. a definite leader - and back when manufacturers spent real time, effort and money on notebook LCD displays. These days it's all 6-bit rubbish...

I still haven't parted with mine. I run the C/Dock II with an Intel Pro/1000XT Server NIC and an Audigy 2 ZS without any issues. Haven't tested anything other than an old Matrox PCI. If you want this thing for gaming you'd want a 5500 or a 5700 (if the 5700 doesn't need external power of some sort). Not sure about frying the dock but you can always grab a cheap one from eBay...

Good luck and enjoy one of the best mobile platforms I have ever used.