I want to upgrade my 9200, can you guys help?

[phen]

I have a Sony Vaio PCV-RS520, 1 gig of RAM, P4 (3.00 Ghz), and a Radeon 9200 series. I'm one of those guys who does well to upgrade his RAM and put a wireless card in his computer, so bare with me. Here's the deal, I am quite happy with my set up right now. For instance, I had fun playing games like half life 2 and doom 3 and have never had trouble running software like adobe illustrator and the rest of the creative suite. I imagine that half life 2 and doom 3 can look better and maybe even have better framerates, but I hate bad framerates, so I feel like I would have noticed if they were hurting. Actually now that I think of it, I did have to turn down some things in doom 3 to get it running smoothly. One thing I am disappointed with is how slow my video editing software, sony VEGAS, runs. Because I want to start getting more into this I am wondering if upgrading my video card will improve my computer's ability to run this program and others like it. Is there a card that will help me out with programs like this and with the next generation of video games? What are the things that I need to take into consideration besides budget when I look into different cards? Which cards do you recommend? I'm not too concerned with budget, but the $300 cards seems too steep out of principle. Can any card go in my computer? How do I find out what can go inside?

 

[raven_87]

Usually video editing tools as such are morely CPU intensive than anything else (excluding Avivo). So your along the right path; that being more RAM and a better cpu.

Your 9200 should be either PCI or AGP. I really dont have the time to look up the specs on your model number but I"m sure it would be easy to find.

I"m sure your GPU defaulted back to DX 8 for Doom3 though, which would explain why it was so playable. Because anything else would really make that GPU crawl.