Improve Radeon 9000 PCI

[Thomas Elser]

Hi all,

I got myself a new EIZO L887 20" display.
I use it with my Dell Inspiron 8200 that is
hooked up in a docking station where I also installed
a Radeon 9000 PCI 64MB.

As the docking station lacks of a DVI port I installed the
screen on the DVI port of the 9000 PCI.

Image quality is absolutely superb, but speed is not.
On the internal AGP Mobile Radeon 9000 speed is OK
but image quality is awful.

So, is there a tweak to enable the 128bit memory bus on the PCI card,
or what other PCI cards would you recommend for my system?
Only need it for 2D apps.

Thanks in advance for your help

Regards

Thomas

 

[Augustus]

So, is there a tweak to enable the 128bit memory bus on the PCI card,

or what other PCI cards would you recommend for my system?
Only need it for 2D apps.

You are mistaken in thinking that the ATI 9000 PCI 64Mb card is a 64bit
card. It's not, it's a true 128bit card, with 250Mhz core and 190Mhz memory.
The reason it's slow is that it's limited to PCI bus transfer speeds (which
is 1/2 of AGP1X) and the very slow memory and underwhelming core speeds.
There's no fix. If you want the best there currently is for the PCI video
slot, there's a 5700LE in PCI available. There's also a Radeon 9250 in PCI,
which is basically the same as yours in terms of speed and DX8.1 support.
The 5700LE is a true DX9 card and although stock clockings are slow, it will
overclock to very respectable speeds, something the 9250 can't do.

 

[Thomas Elser]

Thanks for your answer. Problem is that I can only use
(want to use) an ATI card as the internal GPU is also ATI (M9)
and I feel saver not to mix things.

Is there a chance to overclock the 9000 PCI?
As it got a passive heatsink I didn't want to try it ...

Regards

Thomas

 

[Augustus]

Is there a chance to overclock the 9000 PCI?

As it got a passive heatsink I didn't want to try it ...

Regards

Thomas

You can but try. The core should be good for 275Mhz, but the 190Mhz memory
will likely artifact when pushed much over 210Mhz. Gains will be marginal.