pstockdale
asked on
Upgrading video card and memory mix upgrade
Video Card and memory mix Upgrade
Hi,
I have a 4-5 year old p.c.
I'm considering upgrading my card.
At the moment it's a Diamond Stealth S3968 2mb vram PCI video card.
Would a sensible upgrade option be to replace it with an 8mb Diamond
Stealth II G460 card?
Would it make a significant difference?
My PCI system is a Pentium 100, 40 mb mem, 17" Iiyama Vision Master.
In addition I'm considering adding more memory.
At the moment I have 72 pin 60 ns non-parity simms - It's not EDO.
Can I add some EDO memory and operate in parallel (but in a different
bank) to the existing memory?
I was considering increasing memory to 96mb – the mix would be:-
2x32=64 EDO and 2x16=32 non-EDO
Again, would this make a significant difference?
And lastly, I would be grateful if you could direct me to a source on the internet where I could down load software that would test the various parts of my p.c. – performance wise – so I can do before and after card and memory tests,
Thanks v. much,
Pete
Hi,
I have a 4-5 year old p.c.
I'm considering upgrading my card.
At the moment it's a Diamond Stealth S3968 2mb vram PCI video card.
Would a sensible upgrade option be to replace it with an 8mb Diamond
Stealth II G460 card?
Would it make a significant difference?
My PCI system is a Pentium 100, 40 mb mem, 17" Iiyama Vision Master.
In addition I'm considering adding more memory.
At the moment I have 72 pin 60 ns non-parity simms - It's not EDO.
Can I add some EDO memory and operate in parallel (but in a different
bank) to the existing memory?
I was considering increasing memory to 96mb – the mix would be:-
2x32=64 EDO and 2x16=32 non-EDO
Again, would this make a significant difference?
And lastly, I would be grateful if you could direct me to a source on the internet where I could down load software that would test the various parts of my p.c. – performance wise – so I can do before and after card and memory tests,
Thanks v. much,
Pete
packratt_jk
What kind of motherboard do you have??
pstockdale,
I think that you should not mix edo and non edo memory first off and second off you are not going to see much improvement in the speed of the system between the 40megs and the 96megs also you will see minimal improvment with the video card, you would be better off with a motherboard and processor upgrade instead of the memory, video card combo. For about the same price as the memory and video card.
I think that you should not mix edo and non edo memory first off and second off you are not going to see much improvement in the speed of the system between the 40megs and the 96megs also you will see minimal improvment with the video card, you would be better off with a motherboard and processor upgrade instead of the memory, video card combo. For about the same price as the memory and video card.
firstly for performance measures, i suggest that you try wintune which can be found at http://www.winmag.com/wintune98/. run that before and after any changes that you have made, and then you would be able to tell the differences :)
with regards to making a performance change on your machine. having that new video card might make things slightly faster and you would be able to run at a higher resolution with more colours (especially on a 17 inch :). but besides that, unless you play lotsa graphic intensive games or do lotsa graphics, it's not gonna make much differnce.
the ram won't make a whole heap of difference either, it would probably make things faster if you usually have a few power hungry apps open like netscape, excel, powerpoint and then netscape and some other things running. but if you are a normal user, having that jump from 40 to 96 won't make a lot of differnce. you could open more apps at the same time without running out of memory.
the best thing that i suggest you to do would be to upgrade you chip. i thikn that is the biggest bottleneck in your comptuer at the moment. :)
bush
with regards to making a performance change on your machine. having that new video card might make things slightly faster and you would be able to run at a higher resolution with more colours (especially on a 17 inch :). but besides that, unless you play lotsa graphic intensive games or do lotsa graphics, it's not gonna make much differnce.
the ram won't make a whole heap of difference either, it would probably make things faster if you usually have a few power hungry apps open like netscape, excel, powerpoint and then netscape and some other things running. but if you are a normal user, having that jump from 40 to 96 won't make a lot of differnce. you could open more apps at the same time without running out of memory.
the best thing that i suggest you to do would be to upgrade you chip. i thikn that is the biggest bottleneck in your comptuer at the moment. :)
bush
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The motherboard is an Intel Premiere/PCI II Baby-AT Board.
Pete
Pete