the minimum video card

diroga

New Member
what type of video card is needed for the non-intensive functions of email word and interenet? no games or any thing. i was guessing a PCI 4Mb to be safe. but would a card like that handdles flash movies on the web? how is work divied between CPU and video card as well as memory?
 
If your looking for an actual card, i would say anything above a 16MB, that way you can look at flash, images and video fairly well.
 
It depends also on the cpu, if its a really old system i dont think flash animations would work too well, even if its a nice video card. You may want to do what angel said, go for at least 32mb.
 
What operating system?

For 98 or 2000 or older, a 16MB PCI card would do the trick.

For XP or ME or a similairly graphically heavy environment, it might be an issue. My GF currently has a PCI 16MB card and it looks horrible in XP, and I think it even has problems opening pages and apps as fast as she clicks on them. She has the fancy themes and all the pretty XP features turned on of course. I'm giving her my 9200 and getting me a 9600 though.

I think I'd look for at least a 32MB PCI card for XP or similiar.
 
Viewing flash objects, scrolling webpages and general browser performance is mainly CPU bound.

However if your go with really old stuff as a 4MB PCI card theres often other limitations, such as low resolution/refresh rate support, image quality.
 
Last edited:
tweaker said:


Think he means an Intel CPU and a motherboard w/32MB onboard graphics.

But we dont know what the other specs on the computer are, or if the motherboard even has integrated graphics. What i gather is this person wants to have a computer just for browsing the web, and needs a video card that will allow them to view flash and imaged pretty well.
 
the comp is for the parents. they have comcast for internet. the comcast home page is very heavy on flash. my dad uses world, ppt, and excel often. he likes looking at family pictures on the web. teh mobo will probably be a new one from like 2000 or some thing. i was just wondering how to go as cheap as i can with the preformance that my parents need. more than likely i will get a barebones system with intigrated 2D/3D 32Mb(like a $40 agp card??) really this topic branches alot of subjects(mobo,ram,cpu)....
 
i would go for a AMD athlon Xp ( palomino core ). or a pentium equivalent.
the whole pc would cost about $200, and you would have a good performance for the tasks mentioned.
because, the grafics dont need to be fast.. but if you take a very slow CPU, loading pic's really can take long. so, i reccomend one of the slowest palomino CPU,s , 256Mb SDRAM, a cheap mobo, a 32Mb grafics Card and about a 250/ 350W PSU.
if you buy something like this, you'll have a great pc for doing that stuff.

but if you want the absolute minimum.. i wouldnt go under a P3 450MHz
256Mb RAM, 16 or 32Mb grafics and a 235W PSU.
 
thre current computer is
p3 800Mhz/100
320(256 + 64) 133Mhz RAM
32MB geforce 256 agp 2x
10/100 Mb 3com
some creative audio/dvd card

it runs ok and all. my dad is used to his faster p4's at work it think.

333Mhz ram and a cpu would speed things up for sure. i was thinking of AMD 1.2 - 1.5ghz, 512 333Mhz ram. intigrated video(or used the old card if the mobo supports old school agp) integrated audio and lan.
 
well.. about 1 month ago, i had a AMD Athlon 1400+ Palomino.
with 1 Gb SDRAM ( pc133 ), and a Geforce 6200. ( upgraded grafics from a Geforce 2 GTS to a fx5200, and then to the 6200)
but, with the old Geforce 2, it could run everything really good.
so i tink, the things you're aiming for ar just right :)
 
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