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Date:	Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:38:28 PST8
From:	Colin Campbell <cmcampb@adelphia.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Graphics Card Questions

Content Type: text/plain

John A. Morrow, Jr. wrote:
>
> . Is there collective experience with
> > the integrated video? Does it work with eCS 1.2?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> > John Morrow
> > Atascadero, California
> >
> John,
> I bought a Dell Dimension 8400 at the very beginning of this year. I
> installed eCS 1.2 on it, after buying a second SATA hard drive. (I was
> loath to try to resize or completely blow away the WinXP Home which
> occupied the entire 80GB hard drive.)
>
> Naturally, 12 months later, this has gone from nearly top of the
> line to
> practically obsolete. Dell's XPS line was and is their top model, but
> now, Dimension 9150 seems to be "next", and 8400's are no longer
> offered.
>
> At any rate, this machine came with an ATI Radeon X300 Series (128MB)
> video card, and eCS and SNAP knew right off what to do with it. I'm
> using a 19" flat panel display that was "free" with my system, at a
> 1280
> x 1024 resolution and 16M colors.
>
> I believe that the on board NIC would have worked, but I added an Intel
> PRO/1000 card, and that works fine with a driver available from Intel.
>
> I ordered a Sound Blaster Live card, but I couldn't get that to
> work, so
> I finally unplugged that in favor of the on-board sound, and UniAud
> works with that.
>
> The box I ordered has a pretty fast Pentium, 1GB of memory, a floppy
> drive (!), and a DVD burner and a CD burner. I spent around $1500,
> including buying three years maintenance.
>
> I'm not suggesting that you or anyone buys a Dell, but I'm happy enough
> with it, and I think I'll have a good, usable system for several years.
>
> Naturally, you don't have to spend anything like what I did to have a
> good system.
>
> Happy hunting!
> Colin
>
> Colin:
>
> Thanks for the feedback. I have a Dell Dimension 8200 with 512MB here at
> work, which I have been quite happy with. However, I didn't have to pay
> for it, and with one son at college and another about to join him, we
> are pinching pennies, nickels and dimes!
>
> The idea of a second hard drive seems to be a good one, and if I buy
> another PC I may take that approach, too.
>
> The ATI Radeon X300 is a "PCI Express" card, although I don't quite
> grasp what that is. Is PCI Express a new kind of graphics card slot on
> the motherboard? Or does it plug into a normal PCI slot?
>
> Thanks again for the info,
> John
>
John,
I'm not too sure about PCI Express -- I googled it and found a number of
hits, but I didn't stop to read them for long.

I think you're on target if you want just to update your video card in
your existing machine. Keep the SciTech SNAP Graphics list of supported
cards handy when you go shopping.

And you can probably get a new PC for $400 or so that would be an
improvement on your current one.
Colin

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