Why does my video card suck?

I recently bought a Prowler Radeon 7000 64mb AGP video card and it doesn't seem much better than the 32mb integrated one I had before. Is this card not that good? When I do a system check to see if my PC will run certain games, everything passes but the video card I just installed. If it does pass, it is just barely. Can this be right? I have downloaded the lasted drivers for the card and still no improvement. So, let me ask this. Would I be better off buying a 128mb PCI card instead of the 64mb AGP card? Even though it's a PCI, do you think the extra memory would make up for the fact that it's PCI? I would greatly appreciate any feedback! Thanks!

 

I don't know anything about your Radeon card, I prefer nVidia.

Moving from an AGP card to a PCI card would be a downgrade in technology. I suspect you may have been refering to the latest technology which is PCI-Express. This would be an upgrade in technology if you MotherBoard supports it. I wouldn't but the card ahead of making sure. Lookup you MB on the internet or open the case and look.

 

You'd be better off buying a more powerful AGP card. That thing is ancient, and far below even bottom of the barrel budget cards released these days.

 

I tried installing a Geforce fx5200 but I could not get it to work. I don't think my PC is powerful enough to run it. It's an Emachines t2341 and that's probably part of the problem. I really have to keep it at 4x speed.

 

You can run an 8x AGP card at 4x, and the performance will still be greater than the Radeon 7000.

 

Describe your machine in greater detail. What processor, How much RAM, What size HardDrive, What Operating System?

 

I found specs here:

http://hardware.gamespot.com/EMachines-T2341-3367-S-1-2

 

I hope you've upgraded the RAM. XP itself recommends 265MB. 512 would be better.

 

Agreed-512 is the way to go.

MS only reccomends 128 though.

Which of course, isn't enough to run it worth a damn.

 

I stand corrected. I've never read the box, just always heard 256 as a minimum.

 

In reality--it is.

 

I guess the point of the RAM issue is that raising RAM from 128 to 512 will make a significant improvement in performance where the Video upgrade will only be noticed in certain intense applications.

 

I've added ram to it to bring it up to about 365mb. It's not really a performance issue as much as graphical issue. I installed MVP 2005 after I put in the new video card and it looks awful. Everything is bright and out of whack. Can't figure out the issue on that other than the video card.

 

I suspect that MVP 2005 is a game. I'm not a gamer so I don't know for sure but if your issue is all graphics related then I would agree with Adrynalyne that an AGP upgrade would be in order. I only brought up the RAM issue because the original spec on your machine indicated that 128MB was all it had and that would really bog it down. I can say that I have always had my best luck with nVidia cards but again I'm not a gamer, I work primarily on corporate systems where graphics are not generaly very demanding.

 

If MVP is that baseball game, then it requires a DirectX 9 c compatible card, and no less than an ATI 7500.

Your video card, as stated earlier, isn't good enough.

Get yourself a decent and current card, AGP 8x is backward compatible.

 

I just spoted this post. It may be of interest to you.
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=81905

 

The specs for your 7000 are as follows

Core Speed - 183MHz
Fill Rate - 549 MTexels/s
Memory Bus - 64-bits
Memory Speed - 183MHz
Memory Bandwidth - 1.46 GB/s
Vertex Pipelines - 1
Pixel Pipelines - 1
Pixel Shader Engines - 0

Also it was released in Q3 2001 so it is pretty old.

If you are willing to pay about $120 you can get the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro providing that you have at least a 300w powersupply.

Memory Size - 128MB
Core Speed - 380MHz
Fill Rate - 3040 MTexels/s
Memory Bus - 256-bits
Memory Speed - 340MHz
Memory Bandwidth - 21.76 GB/s
Vertex Pipelines - 4
Pixel Pipelines - 8
Pixel Shader Engines - 8