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surfing and the video card

Forum Graphic & Displays : Graphics Cards - surfing and the video card

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hello

How important is the video card for Iexplorer and MediaPlayer while surfing the net? I'm thinking of streaming video and loading web content.

I posted this problem i have in the software section but wonder what your thoughts are here:

I have 2 small sys , one with win 98 se and the other with win xp pro sp2.
They are similar in harware but the xp sys is way faster on the net than the 98. What is your first impressions.

Win 98 se
Tyan S2060 with p-3 at 800mhz
128meg pc-100 (at 133)
Matrox millenium g200a (8meg) agp with latest drivers
10/100 nic
ibm fru pci sound card
2 x fujitsu dd 4.3 and 4.4gig (no DMA) (fat32)
liteone cd-r and Pine 52x cd
ps2 mouse and kb

Iexplorer 6.0
MediaPlayer 9
Latest flash player (9 ?) no other plugins

BIOS is most recent and most is at default. Serial and parallel are disabled.

Win XP pro
Asus P2b with last bios and p-3 733
256meg pc-100(at 133)
Ati rage 2 pro agp 8meg with latest drivers
10/100 nic
ISA sound blaster card
fugitsu 20 gig dd (no DMA)(NTFS)
Lg cd-r and Lg cd
ps2 mouse and kb

Bios at default settings.
Iexplorer 6
MediaPlayer 10
Latest Flash player (9 ?)

Both have internet settings at default
Both connect by lan cable to cable internet service via hub

I am wondering if win 98 by it's construction can simply not surf and download web pages and play streaming video as well as XP with equivalent hardware!

So what do you think?

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as far as I know, unless you'r watching HD content the video card should not be an issue with streaming video or web surfing, those two things are more cpu bound, i used to have an old win 98 machine and it was slow on the internet too, guess ms improved that on xp dunno really.
try tweaking the internet options in win98, maybe thats your issue

plz correct me if im wrong

Reply to SirCrono

tweaking the internet options in windows 98...

umm, would you mean in Iexplorer perhaps and under advanced options and disabling gifs or other options but i guess thats my real question...What options to tweak? It's mostly the page loading and media player that is slow.

Reply to pike

What you are saying makes no sense. All else equal, the XP machine should be slower than the 98 machine since XP needs more horsepower to just run. Your XP machine has a slower CPU. The only advantage it has over the 98 machine is the amount of RAM. Add more RAM to your 98 machine. Also note that you are using different versions of Media Player on these PCs.

Reply to Slava

if you put a v-8 in a tercel, you are still going to only seat 5 people.

Reply to pike

I saw ISA card and couldn't help but laugh

Reply to kbrasee

isa sound cards are amplyfied 8)

Reply to pike

It appears it wasn`t so much tweaking windows it was my L2 cache that was configurer as "wrtite threw2 rather than "write back".

Another problem is quick time. It doesn`t support win98, at least not the versions that waqnt to install from web sites.

Reply to pike

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