Advise on upgrading video card in older system

[Sonoma Dave]

Would like to upgrade the video card in a Gateway system I bought back in 2001. The system came with Win ME, a 1.3ghz Pentium 4 chip, Intel Monterrey Motherboard, 256mb of RAM, 20gb HD, 250 watt PS, Sound Blaster Live Value Sound Card and a 32MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX AGP Video Card.

I've since upgraded the OS to Win XP, bumped the RAM to 512mb, and replaced the tiny 20gb 4500rpm HD with a Seagate 300gb 7200rpm drive. I tried to upgrade the PS but found out it's a Proprietary type so I guess I'm screwed there.

I'm not heavy into gaming, the boys and I play Half-Life, MechWarrior, and some other older games but the current NVIDIA card just doesn't seem to hack it as we get slowdowns and freeze-ups in parts of some games.

My question is, would this video card be a decent, low-budget upgrade that would greatly improve our gaming experience? Would it integrate and work with my ancient six year old system? Any knowledgeable advice would be welcomed.

 

[talldude123]

The video card would be a great improvement from your old video card that came with the PC. It's still not the greatest compared to what's the latest out there right now though.

But it's great for the comptuer.

 

[Sonoma Dave]

Here are the specs for my board off of Gateway's website if that helps anyone to help me.

Feature Specification
General
Form Factor ATX (12.0×9.6 inches)
Processor 423-pin zero insertion force (ZIF) socket supports the following:
Intel® Pentium® 4 processor
400 MHz system data bus

Memory Two Direct-RDRAM channels with two RIMMs per channel (four RIMM sockets)
Support for up to 2 GB of system memory using PC600 or PC800 RDRAM

Chipset Intel® 850 Chipset consisting of:
Intel 82850 Memory Controller Hub (MCH)
Intel 82801BA I/O Controller Hub (ICH2)
Intel 82802AB 4 Mbit Firmware Hub (FWH)

I/O Control SMSC LPC47M102 LPC bus I/O controller
Video AGP connector supporting 1.5 V 4X AGP cards
USB Ports Version 1.1
Peripheral Interfaces Four Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports
One serial port
One parallel port
Two IDE interfaces with Ultra DMA, ATA-33/66/100 support
One disk drive interface
PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports

Expansion Capabilities Five PCI bus add-in card connectors (SMBus routed to PCI bus connector 2)
BIOS Intel/AMI BIOS (resident in the Intel 82802AB 4 Mbit FWH)
Support for Advanced Power Management (APM), Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), Plug and Play, and SMBIOS

Instantly Available PC Support for PCI Local Bus Specification Revision 2.2
Suspend to RAM support
Wake on PCI, CNR, RS-232, front panel, PS/2 keyboard, and USB ports

Hardware Monitoring features Two fan sense inputs used to monitor fan activity
Enhanced thermal monitor and fan control device Two additional fan sense inputs
Two additional thermal sense inputs

Power Consumption
Mode:

Windows® Me APM full on
Windows Me APM suspend
Windows Me APCI S0
Windows Me APCI S1
Windows Me APCI S3
AC power:

88.6 W
54.3 W
57.6 W
54.1 W
4.1 W

Reliability
Mean time between failures (MTBF) 104,770 hours at 55°C (131°F)
Environmental
Temperature Non-Operating: -40°C to 70°C (-40°F to 158°F)
Operating: 0°C to 55°C (32°F to 131°F)
Regulations
Safety UL 1950/CSA950
EMC FCC Class B/ICES-003 Class B

 

[Sonoma Dave]

Wow, not much help on this site.

 

[sailpog]

The card you choose was PCI-E x 16 the specs you gave said your board only supports AGPx4 cards so you cant use the card you suggested.

 

[Sonoma Dave]

The card I had been considering at CompUSA is not PCI-E, it's PCI - I found out on another tech forum that I'd be better off with an AGP card instead of PCI. It was suggested I consider this SAPPHIRE Radeon 9600XT card from Newegg.com or to just live with my existing system until I can build a new one. I'm leaning towards the latter as my current machine is six years old and big time outdated.