What PCI video card for W95?

[Benson]

Okay, before you tell me to come into the 21st Century, I just built a
Pentium 4 2.8Ghz 800 FSB Northwood core computer with and ASUS
P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard, 1 GB Corsair 2-2-2-5 CAS DDR RAM, and an
ATI X800 XT 256 MB All-In Wonder video card, 5 months ago and it works
great.

However, the computer it replaced is a 200 Mhz Pentium 1 overclocked
to 208 Mhz and a 83 Mhz memory bus, 64MB of RAM, and a Matrox
Millenium 4 MB PCI video card. Before building the new computer this
computer was shared by everyone in the family. It is still
extensively used when more than one family member wants to get on the
internet.

Anyway, when using dial up it was okay at rendering web pages because
the bottle neck was the slow connection. We recently went to a 4 Mbps
d/l cable modem and now the bottle neck seems to be in drawing the web
pages on the screen.

I would like to upgrade the video card but don't know if there are
still any PCI cards available and if so, if they have drivers for
Windows 95.

I know that operating system is ten years old but this old computer
works great for everything we need except games so I see no reason to
replace it. I did install Windows 98 on an extra hard drive and it
ran real slow so want to stick with W95.

So, any suggestions on an available PCI video card that has W95
drivers? Not sure how much memory I would need but have to believe
even 32 MB would be better than the 4 MB card I have now. I'd be
willing to go to a or 128 MB video card if that would help but don't
know at what point more video memory wouldn't make a difference due to
the bottleneck of the processor and rest of the system.

Thanks.

 

[DaveW]

Win 95 is no longer supported by any current PCI video cards, to the best of
my knowledge.

 

[Bob Knowlden]

I have no personal experience with Win95 and currently available graphics
cards, but some claim to support it. For example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150064

It's an nVidia Geforce MX 4000 based card, with 64 MB ov video memory.
(There are a number of MX4000 cards at Newegg at similar prices, should you
prefer another manufacturer. xFx has a generally favorable reputation,
though.)

nVidia claims that their version 77.72 drivers work on Win95. I can't verify
that. (I think the problem with some cards may be that they only have WDM
drivers, which would require Win98se or later.)

I doubt that the graphics card is the "bottleneck" in drawing web sites.
However, the original poster might be willing to risk $36US ($33 + $3 S&H)
to see whether a new card helps.


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[dannysdailys]

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure

I believe any ATI Rage PCI card supports Windows 95.

I also believe that 98SE is the cutoff point. Anything for 98 shoul
run with 95

You could better your options if you upgraded the machine to 98SE o
ME. Turn off all the eye candy in ME however

I'd want to go with at least 64 megs of RAM. Most Rage cards are 3
megs, so you may not have a choice. If this is the case, just ru
16bit graphics. You should do that anyway with such a slo
processor

Sorry, I have one, but it's in Grand Ma's K6-2 450 machine. I hav
that machine on 32 bit color and it runs fine on broad band. Gran
Ma only has dial up so it never breaks a sweat. LOL And, there's
big difference in that and your Pentiu

 

[Dan Wojciechowski]

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure.

I believe any ATI Rage PCI card supports Windows 95.

I also believe that 98SE is the cutoff point. Anything for 98 should
run with 95.

You could better your options if you upgraded the machine to 98SE or
ME. Turn off all the eye candy in ME however.

I'd want to go with at least 64 megs of RAM. Most Rage cards are 32
megs, so you may not have a choice. If this is the case, just run
16bit graphics. You should do that anyway with such a slow
processor.

....

I'm curious why you "want to go with at least 64 megs of RAM". You
aren't going to be running any games that require huge amounts of textures
on a computer of this sort with this kind of video card. Any monitor you
can imagine on this machine can't have a resolution that needs more
than 8 MB of RAM. So, if you don't need the memory for 2D applications,
and you don't need the memory for 3D games, why do you think you need
it at all?

The extra memory won't hurt, but I can't see it being useful.


--
Dan (Woj...) [dmaster](no space)[at](no space)[lucent](no space)[dot](no
space)[com]
===============================
"When I was a child / I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye. / I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now / The child is grown,
The dream is gone. / I have become comfortably numb."