Phil Burness wrote:
On Saturday 12 November 2005 21:49, Felix Miata wrote:
Phil Burness wrote:
I'm in the market to upgrade my graphics card.
Why?
Main reason is that I am also upgrading my monitor to a 19" TFT that can support 1280x1024. My current monitor can't, also my current graphics card has 32Mb memory and I suppose more is better?
If you aren't going to be running more than 32 bit color @ 1280x1024, more than 32M of RAM won't do you any better with any video cards I'm familiar with. Those big RAM video cards are for serious high resolution, well beyond 1280x1024 Standard non-widescreen video modes are for displays with an aspect ratio of 4:3. 1280x1024 is not a standard aspect mode, being 5/4 instead. See http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/aspect.html and http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/std-resolutions.html before you spend your money.
I have about a dozen machines anywhere from 8 years old to 8 months old. My newest graphics card is 7 years old; with RAM anywhere from 4M to 16M; Tseng, ATI & Matrox. The old stuff tends to be bulletproof as long as you don't need 3D, and they don't need extra fans either.
If your newest machine is 8 months old how come your newest graphics card is 7 years old? did you buy a bare bones and have an old card lying around?
I build my own machines and have no use for games, while games are precisely what the latest and greatest video cards are made for. That's overkill by several orders of magnitude for folks who use their puters for work instead of games. 5+ year old video cards are cheap and plentiful on eBay and well up to the task. I last spent less than $30 including shipping to get one lot of 4 G400s pulled from IBM brand PCs, designed something like 8 years ago, one of which ATM I'm running at 1792x1344. -- "I can do all things through Him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:13 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/