somewhat noobish question

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Rahburt-33

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Mar 17, 2008
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alright, unfortunetly i earn barely no money being 14 years old, so im still using a Radeon 7000 graphics card. Its retail memory size is 64 mb, and obviously i need something to hold me off till my birthday in about a month. so i was browsing through my bios, and i saw an option. it said "agp aperature size" and was of course was on 64 mb. now the thing is is that it was white, meaning i could change it. the obvious question is is this a safe thing to do? i dont think it is, but it may help me out potentialy. any and all input is appreciated
 
yeah, make the aperature size larger, benchmark. it won't break anything, it may improve your performance slightly. wait a month and shlep down for something current.
 
yeah, i think i saw the perfect thing (for this machine anyway) at bestbuy yesterday, 512 mb agp nvidia, looks it was pretty good, $130. may buy on from newegg though, seen them for cheaper, and i know if the card itself is worthwhile.
 
it was a 7300gt i think, but the box was different. my bad it was $140 but here it is-
here
and the box looked similar to this one

edit- i wish i had pci-e, but like i said i get very little money, and the board im using doesent have one.
if im lucky i can ask my dad if he has any dual-core imacs at his office and see if its not in use, but i doubt that.
 
well, i may take a look at the one you stated, sharpiefiend, but im thinking the next card i want to get be a nvidia, mostly because ive heard it has better support for linux (and seeing how my card doesent work at all with linux, thats pretty easy to belive)
 
yes, you are correct - i have several nvidia cards using the nvidia binary driver with no problems. mythtv pvr systems. (personal video recorders)
 
Nope, ATI currently has far better support under Linux. AMD released the Radeon specs to the open source crowd and they have a proper driver for it now. nVidia is still closed source and won't release the specs.
 
more like they are on par.. closed or opens source is not a difference in quality.
 
lol i guess the reason i havent gotten my card to work under it is because its to old for anybody to give a care about making drivers for it
but the newer cards work so i guess thats good to hear, and it means whatever i end up getting should work (according to both sharpiefiends and mega666's replies). but even still i mostly just need it for dumb stuff like wow, wich doesent work on half of my linux distros anyways. im surprised i got my current card to play it, but i had to turn main texture quality to performance stats in catalyst. and even still comp crashes, that being with all the wow options set to lowest at 800x600. deng, i hope he does have an imac.
 
High end cards will be severely CPU limited on your setup. I wouldn't waste money on a AGP card, that is a dead end.

Try freecycle, shouldn't be too hard to find a card better than a radeon 7000. Worst case, ebay.
 
AGP aperature size can be set up to twice the amount of video ram on your card (128). Setting the AGP aperature size will not hurt your card or computer.
 
+1 for the AGP 3850 512

ANY 7 series under the 7600GS and GT are crap. NO WAY th 7300gt is worth $140 NO WAY

Im 22 now, but i remember when i was 13 i worked delivering newspapers 4 days a week. I saved up for like 4-5 months and bought myself my Pentium 2 @ 350 with 384 RAM 10GB HD and a ATI Rage Fury Pro 8MB that i upgraded 3 months later to a 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 16MB. those were the days....i remember the first game i played with Glide was KingPin (awesome game) and i was blown away by the graphics. No game since then has given me the "wow!" effect that that game gave me (even though if played much better looking games now). anyone that ever played games in "software mode" then put in a good video card (3DFX then) and played will know what im talking about.
 
yeah some guy at best buy said to me "these are way overpriced" while we were looking at them
deng i guess for those days you got some money delivering paper
9 years, the 90s was the best decade lol.
well ill have to look into all of these, and thank you all for the input, should help me make a better decision when ever i decide to upgrade this thing. a case mod would probally even help, if you couldent tell computer is still beige -_-

freecycle? afraid i havent heard of that, do you think you could tell me?


edit- i can make it go up to 256, but i havent tried yet because surprisingly its doing what i need it to do at 128, but im still debating on that. should i go all the way?
 
You're not going to magically make your video card faster. If that was possible, than the manufacturer would have done it already.

A 7300gt is worthless, no matter how much memory it has. Its worse then most modern integrated video chipsets, so you might as well just buy a new motherboard with a strong IGP if you are willing to plop down $140 on a friggin' 7300.
 
i know it wont magically go faster, im just trying to make it so i can have better quality graphics without making it crash all the time.... which i did

but among other things, someone at my moms work offerd her a (im assuming) pretty good pci-e graphics card (she said it was a few inches long and had a big fan and plastic on top of it, and was very thick) she said no because "i have to many spare parts lying around my house and dont need more"

my room became more... empty
 
Well if it had a "big" fan on top of it, i suppose there is a good chance it is fairly modern and worth a look at. I am 14 aswell and if I was in your delimma, I would ask her if you could have it if you threw out a box of junk or something... just an idea =)

If you can't get that card for free, or it turns out to be worthless, i would buy a new pcie motherboard that would support an upgrade path to core2duo in the future, and a nvidia 7-series 3d card. Im assuming you could get about $100 to work with. Agp has been phased out, and if you make an investment of an agp card, when say in a few years when you do another upgrade that requires a new motherboard, you will be stuck with buying new graphics.

PCIE Motherboard that supports P4 and C2D

Zotac 7600gs

Edit:Wrong Motherboard in Link
 
Go for the AGP 3850. Honestly, it's the best right now that you can get. Don't even thing about getting the Nvidia 7300GT, better driver support on linux or not (which probably isn't true, ATI is on par with Linux drivers). If you don't want to spend ~$130, I think there's some 2600XT's and 3650's that are AGP, which will be plenty fine to hold you over.
 
Why would he buy a 3850? That is like cooking steak in an incinerator. He automatically becomes CPU limited. Then in a year or two when he wants to upgrade his proc, he won't be able to find a decent board that supports agp, so then he gets to upgrade 3 things AGAIN. He should buy a midrange board with pcie and decent graphics for linux, then eventually buy a dual core processor.
 
If you can find a cheap PCI-E board, I will sell you one of my GTS 640's. Maybe even one of my 512's.:D
 
yeah i did throw out a box of junk/old parts and a spare case today
i hope that gets trough to her and she asks for it, because then all I will do is buy a pci-e board
i may have my friend come over and see if he wants to buy any of it (its a long story, so dont ask)
yeah i think ill just save up in the for a new board and pray that she changes her mind asks her friend for the card

now xdivenx the board you mentioned will work with a socket 478?
it looks like it should support my ddr2 2700 and 3200 ram



and i am totaly up for your idea proxy, but like i said i dont have much money
 
Sorry, didn't get on last night...

Darn, i didn't realize you were on a socket 478.
Well, at that point, my opinion isn't really solid anymore. The thing i am trying to plan for is your upgrade path in the future. Socket478 processors arent common anymore, so whenever you upgrade your proc, you will have to buy another motherboard. But since you will only be buying 50-70 dollar board, its not like its a huge waste. There are only 5 socket478 boards on the egg. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&N=2010200280 1070509907&bop=And&Order=RATING
That link is arranged in order of best rated to worst rated.

I would go with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138079 because the first biostar board does NOT have pcie graphics.

I *believe* that as long as the memory is the same pin count, 184 or 420, the board should run slower than specified, but get another opinion on that, or wait until i figure out for sure. =)
 
well right now both links are the same

and i am planning for the board to last me untill i get a job(2 years at most, and for me that should be good),
i wonder how well the onboard graphics are, i should be able to buy this board soon ($20 away w/shipping+tax)

suppose i should buy better ram for it first though.............

the msi one looked pretty decent too
 
oh i feel dumb (about the links part)

just wondering, because coming from agp i wont have a card that will fit in it for a few weeks,

any opinion about the msi board?
 
Eh Reviews on it look alright... Make sure about the ram thing, ive never tried putting lower clocked ram into a high slot.

If you have the cash, DDR2 is pretty cheap these days, so go for it.
 
yeah i found a 1 gig stick for $20, and it had 5 eggs

anybody else think they know about the ram issue? ddr2 2700+3200 into a ddr2 667 slot?
 
I've got an offer open for a 9700 pro AGP if you want it. Looks like you're going for the upgrade route though, good luck with the new system :)
 
ohh thanks yoda, but i think i really should move on to pci-e. ill keep your offer in mind though in case something terrible happens.
 
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