GeForce FX5200

ikilledkenny said:

I would suggest upgrading to a newer card. A new Radeon HD4670 goes for less than $100, I think.

stormy13 said:

You got one of those in AGP or PCI? Somehow I doubt that newmo's old Duron based computer has a PCI-E slot.

torrentg said:

HD3850, in my specs is the best one for AGP ever made. Any variant, even if cheaper of the 3850 would be excellent. I run HAWX DX10 mode highest settings at 1680x1050 with good framerate, no stutters.

GIGABYTE GV-R465D2-1GI Radeon HD 4650 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 8X

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GV-R465D2-1GI Radeon HD 4650 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 8X HDCP Ready Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

Wow, that's pretty cool Kpo6969. I hadn't realized they made this.

However, it's core clock is only 600 MHz while mine is 720 out of the box with OC able to 820. And the memory clock on that is 1600 while mine is 1820 with OC easily to 2300.

But looking into it, I now found this! lol
HIS HD 4670 IceQ Native HDMI 1GB (128bit) DDR3 AGP < AGP Edition < Desktop Graphics < Products | HIS Graphic Cards

I think your suggestion though, is excellent for the price/performance ratio. Even better than mine.

Thanks for the suggested upgrades.
Stormy13 was right to work out its I only have an AGP slot on this Asrock Kv7m2 mobo.
I am not sure that its the right time in my faithful old computer's life cycle to invest $140 plus at UK prices on a card that won't outlast it.
Unfortunately ATi is also a bit more problematic with Linux which I also run on this machine. Getting the Nvidia working on Debian Lenny was fairly stress free.

And there is something perversely enjoyable about running the latest and greatest OS with the dingy old Classic theme fronting it up.

If you can track down a used FX5600 or 5900, get one of those. That'll give you aero capability without spending a fortune.

Thanks Ace38 but I found something even better - my brain.

It started functioning a bit after reading this thread - the little word "driver" popped into it.

When I installed Win7 and saw that Aero worked I instantly assumed that it either had the driver built into its code and had auto -detected the card or it had picked up the driver on my other drive(the XP install). WDDM compliant was another phrase I came across when looking at graphics cards issues. Well I did say I was new to the whole graphics thing.

Anyhow I went along to Nvidia's site and got the Windows Vista Ultimate driver. At restart is was nice and nippy but everything looked too big even though the res was showing as correct in Display properties.

A further restart and it looked properly sized and has been performing well. Might still end up getting something more powerful graphics wise or dropping down to a less resource intensive display - its quite easy to switch between modes anyway.

Well silly me. Its always the obvious things that catch me out.

I am now going off to do silly things with miniature YouTube windows.

Nvidias FX series is just shiiit. I would't recommend that one to anyone. If we talk about old cards, better take radeon 256bits 9800 pro/xt. It was awsome in its time.
But taking Ati HD 2600/3xxx/4xxx card u obtain ability to watch HD content (bluray/avc/VC-1) just like that. DX10/10.1 compatibility is nice addon too because of Seven interface and so on (dx11 is partially backwards compatible with dx10.1). That cards have also power saving mode in 2D (when browsing internet) and small OC ability by driver's control panel just out of the box.
HD 4670 require 400W power supply or better..

I think the Duron is too slow for a high-end graphics card.

1) I would NEVER suggest an AGP based ATI video card that is X800 or higher. The AGP-to-PCIe bridge chip ends up causing major problems since it is reliant on the individual company drivers as ATI does not have a standardized driver base for the AGP based cards.

2) if you have to stick with AGP based cards, look for nvidia cards as they have kept their direct AGP structure much the same as the previous generation AGP cards (such as nvidia FX5000 series or ATI Radeon 9000 series cards did). A few months back I got my father setup with a nvidia 6800XT AGP card since he just wanted a new card and not a new PC to play some of his war and shooting games (like CS:S). He had bought a ATI X1650 AGP card which completely screwed everything up and never worked right. I had him take it back and ordered the nvidia 6800XT online for him and from day 1, everything worked perfectly.

3) in this case, the Duron and less memory would be more of an impact than a better video card would. Look at the WEI (Windows Experience Index) and see which number is lowest. In my case, the lowest is 5.7 (Processor, E6600 @ 2.4GHz). In your case since it is a much older system, your only option would be to get a much newer system to speed things up. Systems like that I keep XP on it and let it run until it dies.

I simply install the latest hotfix drivers from ATI for my HD 3850 AGP and there are no problems whatsoever. Also, I've even put my card's id into the normal non-hotfix drivers and the card even works perfectly like that. This is in XP, Vista and every build of 7 and I tried them all (that were available to us in the wild.)

I do agree that the Duron is quite weak though. Probably can not take too much advantage of a good video card. There will be a bottleneck there.

Even 2400pro/xt? That cards take only about 20/25 W.