Video Card Improve Web Surfing?

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baja150

n00b
Joined
Jan 10, 2005
Messages
52
Current setup.
AMD XP 3000+ 333FSB
1GB Corsair DDR333
Radeon 8500 64MB

I have a 6600GT on order. Can I expect any increase in page loading speed while surfing the net? I currently have a 3 Mbps cable modem connection that consistently runs at about 1.25 to 2 Mbps on many different bandwidth tests, but it seems to load pictures slowly.

Thanks.
 
lol...

Sorry for laughing, but I hope you're joking. :confused:

A new videocard will not increase internet speed or makle pages load quicker. If you want that, look to the Firefox speed tweak (if you're using it) and or a new hdd. Also, tweak that rig up.
 
yes and no. you will see (or not notice much) an increase in load times to open windows explorer or mozilla, w/e, and maybe another marginal milliseconds when loading images, its only as fast as your conenction...
 
You will notice an increase in speed when dragging or moving windows and icons. That's about it.
 
You upgraded your video card from an 8500 to a 6600gt and you're worried about web browsing speeds!? No, i doubt it'll help. :eek: Worry about something more significant, like the fact that you'll be able to game at better resolutions and crank up the settings and aa/af! :p
For ic tweaks, you could do that about:config thingy for firefox, or mtu tweaks, or tweakmaster. I have a 5mbps con, and its almost always limited by the server providing the page.
 
Actually yeah, it does make a difference but not from a 8500 you wont notice it.

My 9800 Pro died last week (waiting on newegg rma) and I've been using a Kyro card in my system and I notice crappier quality videos, slower rendering times when browsing and much higher cpu loads.

So it can make a difference, if you go to a really crappy old-ass card. :p
 
Oh please. And i suppose you also bought into the bit about how Pentium4's can actually improve your netsurfing :rolleyes: :D :D :D
 
It only really matters when you don't have enough video ram. An 8mb card can barely handle 1024x768@85Hz and 24bit color. Mainly, you see the difference when watching a video. The video becomes choppy due to the card running out of frame buffer. If you drop the color down to 16bits, the video becomes smooth once again.
 
Sly said:
Oh please. And i suppose you also bought into the bit about how Pentium4's can actually improve your netsurfing :rolleyes: :D :D :D
Click to expand...

They can if you have alot of windows open while your working with applications that hog alot of CPU power. HyperThreading makes everything seem more fluent when the CPU is under load through dividing up the workload more efficiently. With an Athlon 64 the transition time between windows opening and running other CPU intensive applications would be slower.
 
I had a 486 once, and when I took out the 1meg s3 ISA videocard that was in there and replaced it with a 16meg Voodoo Banshee, the web was a LOT faster.

But with every other upgrade I’ve ever done, I haven’t noticed any difference.
 
I dont know what it was, most likely the CPU, but i was on a Pentium 4 2.26Ghz 533FSB w/ nVidia Ti 4600 128mb for a couple of weeks here not long ago and i definitely noticed the difference in switching between windows.
 
If you really want to speed up your websurfing... Money is better spent on Crack IMO.
 
Thank you for your replies and also the smart remarks.

I didn't think it would make a noticeable difference. The only reason I asked is because I have two almost identical systems; one is at my mom's house w/ a ATI9600XT and only a 1.5Mbps cable connection and the one at my house w/ the ATI8500AIW and a 3Mbps cable connection.

I've used the same bandwidth tests on both machines and the 3Mbps connection is always faster like it should be, but it noticeably loads pages slower.

Both machines are running WinXPPro w/ all the same updates, I use IE for both, CPU (AMD) clock speed and FSB are close enough to call the same. The only thing significantly different is the Vid card, so I thought it may have something to do with it.

Thanks again.
 
Maybe if you don't have cable then you have slow page loading. A videocard will not load pages faster....AT ALL.
 
ameoba said:
Bandwidth != Latency
Click to expand...

QFT. There is no difference between surfing with a Pentium4 with dual SLI, and an Athlon900 with a Voodoo3. You're still waiting for that 500kb webpage to download (About 2 minutes on a 56k), even a TNT2 would be able to keep up with that :p

@burningrave101
We're only talking about surfing, not multitasking :p When they were advertising multimedia stuff. I agreed. But when they started preaching about how you need P4's just to surf... :rolleyes:
 
Sly said:
QFT. There is no difference between surfing with a Pentium4 with dual SLI, and an Athlon900 with a Voodoo3. You're still waiting for that 500kb webpage to download (About 2 minutes on a 56k), even a TNT2 would be able to keep up with that :p

@burningrave101
We're only talking about surfing, not multitasking :p When they were advertising multimedia stuff. I agreed. But when they started preaching about how you need P4's just to surf... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...


yeap tnt2 can keep up ;) .
 
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