Video card for Vista

[Diane K]

When I ran the pre-check utility for Vista it said my video card will work
but not support all the features such as the 3-D view. Vista loaded just
fine. I have an Intel 82865G. What would any of you recommend for a
reasonable priced replacement video card?

 

[Troy McClure]

anything with at least 128MB video ram. and make sure the manufacturer
supplies a WDDM driver or Aero Glass still wont work

 

[David Hearn]

On a budget and got an AGP slot? Look for an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro or
similar. I've got an All-In-Wonder version which I picked up from eBay
a year or so ago for £50. You'll probably find them cheaper now,
especially without the TV card bit. It's fully supported in Vista (and
ATI give enhanced drivers). I can't remember the complete scores, but
the 'desktop graphics' score was 5.9 in my PC!! Still only get a 3.x
score as the CPU and RAM is the limiting factor. This was with the ATI
drivers - the MS included drivers were more like 2.x or 3.x score on the
'desktop graphics'.

A quick search on eBay shows that 9700 Pro's go for about £20-£30.

3D wise, it plays Half Life 2 brilliantly on my 2.2GHz Athlon XP (not
tried HL2 in Vista yet).

So, if you're looking for a basic full Aero support graphics card with
reasonable performance and at a low price, you probably can't go far
wrong with the Radeon 9700 Pro.

Hope that helps,

David

 

[will]

I have both an ATI radeon pro 128 Mb and also a geoforce 6200 256Mb (both
agp)

Firstly the ATI radeon pro It's a great card and scored a performance of 5.4
But for some reason if I put it under a heavy load it tends to put artifacts
on the screen (works fine with XP no matter how much load I put on it)

Then there's the geoforce 6200 also a great card and a lot cheaper than the
Radeon Pro and gives a score of 3.7 on my system but overall much more
stable than my radeon

After my beta version expires I will go back to XP for 6 months or so and
use my 9700 pro but for Vista my geoforce 6200 is my first choice however
both cards run Aero Glass flawlessly

 

[David Hearn]

Which Radeon Pro are you talking about? There's a number.

Secondly, it sounds like you're using the beta of Vista, rather than
RTM. I've not seen any artifacts with the 9700 Pro, Vista RTM, and
ATI's latest drivers.

But as you say, you don't need an expensive graphics card to get good
results in Vista.

D

 

[will]

Yes I'm using RC2 5744

I have the ATI 9700 pro There are basically two types of this model one with
Infinion memory chips and one model with Samsung memory chips

The one with samsung memory chips is the preferred model for overclockers
(also the one I have) However I've never overclocked it, but it is known for
overheating issues thats when mine puts out artifacts and it only seems to
overheat when I run it with Vista but I have no problems at all running it
with XP, this might well be an issue related to Vista RC2 and it might run
perfectly with Vista RTM

But for now I'm quite Happy with my Geoforce 6200 price wise it's at the
bottom end of the scale but it performs very well and it has no problems
running HDTV in media center

I'd highly recommend the Geoforce 6200 to anyone looking for a stable card
capable of Aero Glass for advanced 3D gamming grahpics that require a high
frame rate and fast rendering I'd probably recommend people look for
something with a faster memory bandwidth

 

[Kenneth Cummings]

Hello Will,

If you think the GeoForce 6200 is something you should try the
GeForce 7900 GS Video.. It's great for gaming and graphics and the
HD is fantastic..

 

[will]

Thats exactly the what I'm thinking of getting once I upgrade my system but
I won't be upgrading my system till I buy Vista RTM but for now I find my
6200 runs fine on my system considering it's a very cheap card

 

[David Hearn]

So, are the NVidia drivers working right yet? I thought they were
lacking OpenGL and general stability the last time I heard.

D

 

[will]

I've had absolutely no issues with the Nvidia drivers
However I'm running an AGP card, I believe the PCI-E , and PCI-E SLI capable
cards from Nvidia are still having some driver Issues under Vista