Upgrade?

[Guest]

Right now, I'm weary of upgrading to Vista. I've heard many stories about the
minimum requirements to upgrade to Vista Home Premium and how it's a strain
on the computer.

I bought this computer two years ago this upcoming March. It's a HP Pavilion
a839n with an AMD Athlon 64 3400+ (2.41GHz) processor, 384MB of RAM
(integrated video chipset shares the memory), SiS 760 integrated chipset set
at 128MB of memory. Plus, I have over 90GB out of 142GB of hard drive space
left.

Obviously, I'm going to have to upgrade the memory and the video card. But
I'm wondering, what's the best video card to purchase? Since the one I have
now is integrated, is there a way to disable that one and use a card that has
it's own dedicated memory?

Any suggestions or any other upgrades I should preform before making the
plunge?

Thanks!

 

[Adam]

Obviously, I'm going to have to upgrade the memory and the video card. But
I'm wondering, what's the best video card to purchase? Since the one I
have
now is integrated, is there a way to disable that one and use a card that
has
it's own dedicated memory?

To disable -- probably. It should be an option in the BIOS settings of the
computer -- check the HP documentation. Before buying a new graphics card,
check what open slots you have and buy a reasonable card that you can afford
which fits -- there probably isn't a huge point going overboard and getting
something mismatched to the rest of your system.

The other thing to check is what the most modern AMD chip that fits your
motherboard -- obviously you don't have to do it straight away, but it could
be possible to swap out the processor for a dual core and get extra CPU
power that way.

 

[Jeff]

you should be able to upgrade the video card with no problem. you'll have to
disable the onboard one in your bios. get a newer geforce card. i think you
probably have an agp video card slot on your motherboard. upgrade your
memory to at least 1gb. if you can, get 2gb's. with those upgrades it should
run good on your system.

-jeff

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Yes, you will need to up the memory and get a video card to get satisfactory
performance as well as all the graphic changes. At a minimum, use 512MB, a
full GB would be better. Your board has an available AGP slot, so it should
be safe to assume that you can disable the on-board video, probably in the
BIOS but if not via a jumper on the motherboard. Plus, doing so will up the
available system memory back to 512MB.

Specs:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00257657&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=445593#

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Guest]

Sounds good. So when looking for a video card, I should find something with
enough on board memory to fit the AGP slot?

I found something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/ATI-RADEON-95.../ref=sr_1_12/002-3295514-2136039?ie=UTF8&s=pc

I'm not that interested in intense graphics or gaming. Just something to
boost me pas the minimum requirements of Vista Home Premium. Looking for
memory shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks a lot everyone!

 

[Dr. Heywood Floyd]

For cooling, and other, reasons some of the cards require a LOT of
surrounding space. Make sure the new one will fit!

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Yes, that card is supported for the full aero effects and has Vista drivers
available. With Vista, unlike XP and its predecessors, there is a lot more
work passed to the GPU, hence the hardier requirements. Plus, it frees up
the CPU from video processing leaving it available to crunch data instead.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org