old school P2 needs video card

protoadies · Jun 21, 2005

my wife left me took, the kids, dog, car and worst off she took the computer. im gonna miss her. the computer that is. anyways right now im on a old compaq deskpro with a pentium 2 400mhz. it has a ati 4 meg video card in it right now. but i cant play videos or games anything. so im looking for a up grade no more than 50 bucks, it has a AGP port and it says 1x, so im guessing that isnt good considering theres 8x. what would u guys recommend. ive been looking on ebay and found many cards but all are agp 4/8x. im not into playing doom 3 or need killer frame rates, but while watching dvds and mpgs i do want a clean unchoppy pictures. thanks.

yog · Jun 21, 2005

You are going to need better than 400 MHZ to play movies.

My best suggestion is to get a new system. What you have is probably the best that your processor will handle.

jamesavery22 · Jun 22, 2005

yog said:
You are going to need better than 400 MHZ to play movies.

My best suggestion is to get a new system. What you have is probably the best that your processor will handle.

Second that. If you have the time troll the slickdeals.net forums for coupons on a full dell system. you can get a 2.4ghz dell box with an lcd for under 400$. Sometimes much much under that with all the %off coupons and stackable instant rebate ones that come up once in awhile. Would be a worthy investment.

Sorry to hear about the family problems.

DanaG · Jun 23, 2005

well, my Radeon 7500 works just fine in an AGP 2x (physically the same as 1x) slot on ap dual p2 350 (later p3 650), and it played videos just fine. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to that system, as it was my high school computer teacher's, and I took my 7500 with me when I graduated.

flixotide · Jun 24, 2005

protoadies said:
my wife left me took, the kids, dog, car and worst off she took the computer. im gonna miss her. the computer that is. anyways right now im on a old compaq deskpro with a pentium 2 400mhz. it has a ati 4 meg video card in it right now. but i cant play videos or games anything. so im looking for a up grade no more than 50 bucks, it has a AGP port and it says 1x, so im guessing that isnt good considering theres 8x. what would u guys recommend. ive been looking on ebay and found many cards but all are agp 4/8x. im not into playing doom 3 or need killer frame rates, but while watching dvds and mpgs i do want a clean unchoppy pictures. thanks.

First of all, welcome to the forums.

Playing game with a P2 400 will be limitied to older titles. And for videos, I would only suggestion DVD playback, playing back DIVX / XVID movies wont work for ya.

In your case, see if you can dust up an old Matrox Millenium card for AGP, they were excellent for video playback. Just about the best there was. But for heavy 3D gaming they were very poor. But as you wont be doing heavy 3D gaming on a P2 400 anytime soon, I suggest you look for a Matrox Millenium.

Cheers, Flix

funnyperson1 · Jun 24, 2005

flixotide said:
First of all, welcome to the forums.

Playing game with a P2 400 will be limitied to older titles. And for videos, I would only suggestion DVD playback, playing back DIVX / XVID movies wont work for ya.

In your case, see if you can dust up an old Matrox Millenium card for AGP, they were excellent for video playback. Just about the best there was. But for heavy 3D gaming they were very poor. But as you wont be doing heavy 3D gaming on a P2 400 anytime soon, I suggest you look for a Matrox Millenium.

Cheers, Flix

A Matrox would be a great choice for watching DVD's with nice quality.

Another suggestion would be to get an ATi Rage 128 Pro based board like the Rage Fury Pro, you can get them off Ebay for like 10 bucks and they have great DVD quality (much better than the Nvidia cards of the time, NV didn't get their DVD quality straightened out until the Geforce3) and the 3D wasn't bad either, I used to love playing Soldier of Fortune and Serious Sam 1 on mine. Also the Rage Fury Pro had Video input and output which was really cool.

Another idea would be to get a dedicated MPEG decoder card which would really give you some good quality DVD viewing.

cwhits · Jun 24, 2005

my dad has a ati rage fury pro hed be interested in selling to you if youd like?

funnyperson1 · Jun 24, 2005

cwhits said:
my dad has a ati rage fury pro hed be interested in selling to you if youd like?

You can't sell stuff in the public parts of the forum, it is against the rules.

3line · Jun 24, 2005

yog said:
You are going to need better than 400 MHZ to play movies.

You should at least be OK with an overclock to 500mhz

I spent the first 3 years of college watching divx/xvid movies on a 400mhz PII, btw. You can watch most any movie, but you'll have to disable the filters like postprocessing.

Susquehannock · Jun 25, 2005

My old 400mhz P2 Dell Dimension played movies just fine with the original
TNT1 vid card. Runs even better with a gf2 GTS card. (not an MX)

Here is a new gf2 GTS for $18.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?In...n=Pricewatch.com&cm_cat=Shopping&cm_ite=total

threeme2189 · Jun 25, 2005

i would suggest a geforce 2 if you want a worthwhile upgrade. if that card (geforce 2 mx-400) can run GTA San andreas its good enough for movies.

Susquehannock · Jun 25, 2005

Agree ... and going from a gf2 MX to a gf2 GTS should be a nice improvement.
Look at this performance comparrison chart :

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20020418/vgacharts-05.html

GTS gets almost double the score of MX with 3dMark2001. About the same
with Quake3 as well.

funnyperson1 · Jun 25, 2005

Great, but no matter what this is going to be a dog gaming system regardless. You aren't going to be playing any decent looking games with a PII, so why not get good DVD quality?

The Geforce2 cards had really bad DVD quality compared to its competitors. The 2D Quality and DVD playback quality of much older ATI cards like the Rage Fury Pro are superior to pretty much any Nvidia card before the Geforce3.

When I got my Geforce2 Pro after having a Rage Fury Pro, my display was noticeably fuzzier, and that was on a $40 Compaq monitor. That didn't change until I snapped off the capacitors that filter the signal, and that mod made my GF2 look NICE. (Not a mod for the squemish, basically you cursh the capacitors and clean the card with rubbing alcohol).

Edit: After rerreading the first post it seems that you actually want to play some games as well, so maybe you should go with a GF2 GTS or better, a 7500 would work as well.

But just make sure the card is 4X AGP or lower, if it is 8X AGP then it will not work in your mobo.

3line · Jun 25, 2005

funnyperson1 said:
But just make sure the card is 4X AGP or lower, if it is 8X AGP then it will not work in your mobo.

I'm running an 8x AGP Ti4800 in my old 2x AGP slot. It really depends on the card.

Just remember to get a card with a notch close to the front of the card (backplate) like this one. Some 8x cards only have the second notch:

Susquehannock · Jun 25, 2005

Yep. Difference is the voltage if I'm not mistaken. Some newer cards require more juice
than than the 1.5v the older 2X port provides. Some 8X will work, others won't.

3line · Jun 25, 2005

yog said:
What you have is probably the best that your processor will handle.

That is so misinformed that I don't know where to begin. I guess I must have been imagining my upgrade from a 4 meg riva 128 to a TNT2 Ultra on my old P2 400mhz. I must've been imagining all those frame rate increases in Q3 and UT too.

protoadies · Jun 28, 2005

wow thanks for all the replys i was arrasted my wife put a restraining order on me. thats why it took so long to reply. Just to clarify if dont play 3d games, all i really play is Worms, and sometimes card games. all i really need is dvd playback, and divx playback. but now i know what cards to look for on ebay. thanks

blitzkrieg1110 · Jun 28, 2005

protoadies said:
wow thanks for all the replys i was arrasted my wife put a restraining order on me. thats why it took so long to reply. Just to clarify if dont play 3d games, all i really play is Worms, and sometimes card games. all i really need is dvd playback, and divx playback. but now i know what cards to look for on ebay. thanks

wow....sorry to hear that.....i know that i used to have a tnt2 coupled with a 667mhz celeron and it was just fine for movies/web browsing.....but definetely not for games, but im sure you figured that lol. you could probably get one of those for REAL cheap.

3line · Jun 29, 2005

I would recommend a geforce mx440, if you can get one cheap off ebay.

protoadies · Jun 29, 2005

would i be better off getting a PCI card?
vs
agp 2.0 card
i know PCI will be alot easier to find

old school P2 needs video card

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