Is my graphics card decent enough for Vista?

unkel

Vista ultimate 32 bit is running fine with my old, passively cooled, ATI Radeon 9600 256MB graphics card powering my Dell 20" 1600*1200 LCD monitor. I'm running an Opteron 144 1.8@2.7 MHz on a S939 in a very quiet setup

I don't play games, but I do want the best possible graphics experience on windows and on video playback. Is my setup utilising the Aero Glass UI to the full?

What say you? Do I need to upgrade my graphics card? What would you recommend and why?

I've been a bit out of the loop on the technology front, so any advice is very welcome

unkel

Anyone?

jwt

I use an Nvidia 7300 LE which is just about adequate so you could use that as the base line for minimum performance.

Google for sites that compare cards performance, tomshardware is one that comes to mind

also windows upgrade advisor is pretty good at telling you whats good and what wont work http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx

John

8T8

No you don't need to upgrade your graphics card.

Your card has 256MB of RAM which is fine for Aero, resolution limitations with Aero Glass enabled kick in on cards with only 32-128MB of RAM & no access to system RAM via the PCI-e bus like Hypermemory or Turbocache tech found on low end PCI-e cards.

You could install the ATI Catalyst Vista display drivers if your using stock ones, might improve the rendering speed of flip3d a little bit but that's about it.

unkel

Thanks for the help!

However, I am an idiot. My card does not have 256MB, as I posted, but only 128MB. It's AGP too. In Vista display settings, it states that my total available graphics memory is 255MB, the dedicated video memory is 128MB and the shared system memory is 127MB

So I am looking for an upgrade as surely, shared system memory for graphics is no good. I've posted a new thread for advice here

Any help much appreciated!

8T8

Well 1600x1200 is the max limit for Aero Glass & 128MB available on GPU's so you don't really need to upgrade unless you are buying a bigger monitor (you can always turn off Aero Glass as well to disable the resolution limitation but lose the eye candy of course).

And it looks like ATI have some sort of virutalization going on with the AGP part anyway under Vista so if it needs to it can use a little bit of system RAM. It's all transparent as it shifts about the data in the GPU's RAM into system RAM & vice versa though if you do actually notice any delays or slowdowns maybe a GPU with more RAM is worth considering.

Either of the recommendations Hopeful made will do.

unkel

8T8 wrote:

Well 1600x1200 is the max limit for Aero Glass & 128MB available on GPU's so you don't really need to upgrade unless you are buying a bigger monitor

I've no intention of upgrading my monitor, so it looks like I don't need to upgrade my graphics card then. Thanks a lot for your help