compatibility of ATI Radeon 9000 Pro

[geekazoid]

hey, im planning to buy a ATI Radeon 9000 PRO as my current graphics card is obsolete....i would like to know if it is compatible with an Acer Aspire T310...im not really sure of the motherboard make...i can check it if it is required...i checked the ATI site n all they require is compatibility with AGP 2x 4x or 8x....im not exactly sure what that means....the motherboard has an AGP port n 3 PCI ports...any help would be really appreciated.

System specs :

Acer Aspire T310
2.80 GHz
Intel(R)Pentium(R) 4
224 MB RAM
Windows XP Home Edition SP2

my current card is what came with my computer...which is around 5 years old..SiS 650/651/740/661FX/741/760 series....it gets stuck in an infinite loop...n i dont feel like solving it cuz its really old anyway so i decided to buy a new card

 

[elitehacker]

AGP 2x 4x 8x are just different revisions of the AGP bus. They each have different bandwith capacities. If the Ati 9000 pro has support for 2, 4 as well as 8 it just means that it will be compatible with ANY AGP slot. Your current graphics card must be an exhibit in a musuem because the 9000 pro is not much of an upgrade, its a dinosaur!!! There are still 7600GT cards that runs on AGP. It you want t a real upgrade, you should have a look at those.

 

[evil-xxx]

AGP 2x 4x 8x are just different revisions of the AGP bus. They each have different bandwith capacities. If the Ati 9000 pro has support for 2, 4 as well as 8 it just means that it will be compatible with ANY AGP slot. Your current graphics card must be an exhibit in a musuem because the 9000 pro is not much of an upgrade, its a dinosaur!!! There are still 7600GT cards that runs on AGP. It you want t a real upgrade, you should have a look at those.

it's not a wise idea to upgrade his grafic card with 256ram only,I think.

 

[mep916]

There are still 7600GT cards that runs on AGP. It you want t a real upgrade, you should have a look at those.

The PSU in the Acer will not power the 7600.

Can you take a look at the power supply and tell us how many watts it produces? Also, can you tell us how many amps are provided on the +12V Rail(s). I'm guessing your power supply is ≤ to 300W. Most decent video cards require at least 350W.

 

[elitehacker]

umm, you can run the 7600GT with a 300W power supply, it does not require an external power connector, it happlily runs on the power provided by the PCI-E bus. I would say if you want a cheap upgrade or want to keep your current computer, then get some cheap RAM off ebay and upgrade to a 7600GT, if not then get new system, and this time don't buy a pre-built computer, actually go out there and do some research, source the parts and assemble it yourself. I think half the fun is putting your computer together, so I don't know why people are willing to pay to miss out on the fun, maybe its just me. But the most important thing to note is that if you want value for money or control over its performance definitely go out there and build your own, you don't need a degree to do it, its very straight forward.

 

[mep916]

umm, you can run the 7600GT with a 300W power supply, it does not require an external power connector, it happlily runs on the power provided by the PCI-E bus.

He's using an AGP bus, not PCI-E. The AGP card does require a 4-pin molex power connection.

Requirements
Minimum of a 350 Watt power supply.
(Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 18 Amp Amps.)
An available 4-pin Molex hard drive power dongle

Link to the 7600GS. Couldn't find specs on the GT, although I'm positive the power requirements for the AGP version are similar. If you have a PSU providing ≤ 300W, I'd recommend, at least, a Radeon 9200.

 

[elitehacker]

Oh sorry my bad, yeah it would be similar to the GS, the GS just has afew piplelines disabled, the difference is not great. I would advise a whole new system man, there isn't much you can do with a single 2.8Ghz CPU, its just too ancient, there is no used trying to upgrade it because you would have the right ports to warrant an upgrade.

 

[mep916]

For $600, you can build a decent, modern rig. Any AGP card you put in that system will not play any of the good games currently available.

 

[elitehacker]

It really depends on your definition of "play" I'm sure a 7600GT will be sufficient to run UT3 on medium, or Crysis on low at a 1024x768 or something.

 

[mep916]

It really depends on your definition of "play" I'm sure a 7600GT will be sufficient to run UT3 on medium, or Crysis on low at a 1024x768 or something.

I was referring to cards compatible with his system. If his PSU meets the power requirements above, then, yes, he should obvioulsy look at the 7600. That's unlikely, however.

 

[elitehacker]

That is why he should just scrap that dinosaur, donate it to a musuem or something and get himself a new system to play games on. Its ludicrous to expect anything from a bomb like that.