Will Videocard Help?

[ZR]

Hi,
I have an old (4 years?) Dell machine with 2.4 GHz Celeron, 1G RAM and
onboard Intel graphics driving a 1920 x 1200 LCD monitor. We do not play
game on this machine. It runs fine mostly, including watching online videos,
DVDs and TVs. However it will have refresh problems in some applications
when running full screen at full resolution.

For example, watching full screen TV (I have a TV card in there) at
1920x1200 is impossible, but lower resolution would be fine. Using Flash
player watching online videos at full screen will have trouble, but some
other players (like WMP) are fine.

But DVD and Windows Media Player work fine full screen at 1920x1200.

When it's having trouble at full screen, the CPU is always running at
100%.

So the question for you experts is: will putting in a PCI video card in
there solve this problem? Would most of the graphics processing be shifted
onto the video card and free up the CPU?

It only has PCI interface and upgrade MB or CPU is out of the question
(don't want to, ).

Thanks for any info.

 

[Augustus]

Hi,
I have an old (4 years?) Dell machine with 2.4 GHz Celeron, 1G RAM and
onboard Intel graphics driving a 1920 x 1200 LCD monitor. We do not play
game on this machine. It runs fine mostly, including watching online
videos,
DVDs and TVs. However it will have refresh problems in some applications
when running full screen at full resolution.

For example, watching full screen TV (I have a TV card in there) at
1920x1200 is impossible, but lower resolution would be fine. Using Flash
player watching online videos at full screen will have trouble, but some
other players (like WMP) are fine.

But DVD and Windows Media Player work fine full screen at 1920x1200.

When it's having trouble at full screen, the CPU is always running at
100%.

So the question for you experts is: will putting in a PCI video card in
there solve this problem? Would most of the graphics processing be shifted
onto the video card and free up the CPU?

It only has PCI interface and upgrade MB or CPU is out of the question
(don't want to, ).

Thanks for any info.

To reiterate what was said on the nVidia group to this post, and to add my
very similar opinion....4 year old budget Dell box with a P4 Celeron 2.4Ghz,
1 Gig of Shared DDR and integrated Intel Extreme graphics = poor
perfromance. You can get a used P4 Northwood 2.8Ghz 512Kb L2 533FSB
processor for about $25-30. This will basically more than double the
performance of a Celeron 2.4 400FSB with 128Kb L2. Use the service tag to
look up the system specs to make sure the mainboard supports 533FSB.
Virtually every budget Dell box from 4 years back does. A PCI card? Won't
solve your issue.

 

[Ed Light]

If the cpu is at 100% then most likely that is your problem. Some of
those software players are not very efficient. My Athlon 64 at 2 gigs
can't play Hulu full-screen properly at 1280x1024 - I have to overclock
to 2.4.
--
Ed Light

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[yaugin]

    For example, watching full screen TV (I have a TV card in there) at
1920x1200 is impossible, but lower resolution would be fine. Using Flash
player watching online videos at full screen will have trouble, but some
other players (like WMP) are fine.

    But DVD and Windows Media Player work fine full screen at 1920x1200.

    When it's having trouble at full screen, the CPU is always running at
100%.

That is as much the fault of the tuner card as it is the CPU. Yours
sounds like a "soft" tuner whose driver passes the work to the CPU. A
proper tuner card has a capable onboard decoder and should not stress
the CPU.

    So the question for you experts is: will putting in a PCI video card in
there solve this problem? Would most of the graphics processing be shifted
onto the video card and free up the CPU?

For a video card to make a difference, the video card must have a
hardware decoder and the tuner application must have been programmed
to use that decoder. So it depends on whether this is true for your
tuner card. Personally I think it's unlikely but I'm not familiar with
the trends there.

In any case, the best way to solve the problem is directly: replace
the tuner card with a better model. Then you won't need to wonder if a
video card will help.

 

[pokey man]

No AGP slot?

pm