New pc graphics card?

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Ca3m0n

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Sep 13, 2016
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I have an old HP pc that need a graphics card, it originally had Windows xp but Windows xp was really slow, and now I have linux, I have no clue what graphics I should get but it has a Radeon 9600 pro family, anything better than that is what I need, my budget is about $40. I also believe it has onboard NVidia GeForce 4mx. That might be better but again no idea how to switch the graphics.

Any help is great.
 
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Mightyena
PCI and PCI-Express are different connectors. From that, it looks like your motherboard uses AGP.

You's be lucky to find a graphics card that supports AGP these days, as it was discontinued over 8 years ago.

I have to say it probably isn't worth spending any money on a PC that is 15 years old, since the integrated graphics in a modern Celeron or AMD APU would perform better. You would be far better off to put the thing to bed and get yourself a cheap new machine.

The reason Linux gives lower FPS is probably because you're trying to run a 13 year old GPU on a (presumably) modern OS. Those cards are no longer supported by AMD, and Linux is probably using the generic driver for them, which will give bad performance.

You could try...
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Mightyena

Mightyena

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Oct 21, 2014
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How old is the PC? Better make sure it has a PCI Express slot. I believe I used to have a Radeon 9600 back in the day, and it used AGP, so there's a chance you might be out of luck if that is the case.

(PCI Express began to replace AGP as the interface used by graphics cards from around 2004-2008. If your computer has an AGP slot instead of PCI-E, there's not much you'll be able to do about it)

By the way, the Radeon 9600 is much (around 4x) better than the onboard GeForce4.
 
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Ca3m0n

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Sep 13, 2016
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It is a HP pavilion a384x,

On cnet I found this
"3 (total) / 2 (free) x PCI
1 (total) / 0 (free) x CPU
2 (total) / 1 (free) x DIMM 184-pin
1 (total) / 0 (free) x AGP"

I believe it has 3 of them

It was probably bought in 2000 - 2001, my grandmother bought it but that may not be correct. And she recently gave it to me cause it was just sitting around. I used to play minecraft on it about two years ago and I do remember getting over 40 fps. Not sure what changed, as unlikely as it seems.


And it was a NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440, not sure if that makes a difference.

Another thing, on Windows XP I try to run say, Minecraft. I get an error message saying
"Minecraft.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. Sorry for the inconvenience" , but on Linux I have no issue, besides 7 fps.
 
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Mightyena

Mightyena

Honorable
Oct 21, 2014
217
0
10,860
PCI and PCI-Express are different connectors. From that, it looks like your motherboard uses AGP.

You's be lucky to find a graphics card that supports AGP these days, as it was discontinued over 8 years ago.

I have to say it probably isn't worth spending any money on a PC that is 15 years old, since the integrated graphics in a modern Celeron or AMD APU would perform better. You would be far better off to put the thing to bed and get yourself a cheap new machine.

The reason Linux gives lower FPS is probably because you're trying to run a 13 year old GPU on a (presumably) modern OS. Those cards are no longer supported by AMD, and Linux is probably using the generic driver for them, which will give bad performance.

You could try re-installing Windows XP, and seeing if you can find the last supported driver for the 9600, but there's really no upgrade path for you - there hasn't been for around 8-10 years...

Sorry there isn't better news, but that PC has had an incredibly long life, and is now pretty much beyont the point of being viable.
 
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