A small question from a newbie in HW.. hope it's OK.

I have an old computer, almost dare not to say it.. AMD Athlon 900 Mhz. 500 Mb memory.

My MB is equipped with AGP or PCI.
I have an 21" monitor (Compaq P1100)
I prefer to run max res 1920 x 1440

and.. I do not play games. The important for me is max performance on my relatively limited system, with high res and performance in applications such as Adobe InDesign etc.

All the threads I could find here refers to an ancient PC as something with 2GhZ+ and 1 Gb memory.

What are the options for really old systems ? I am considering Leadtek Geforce 7600GT, found one for $50 used. It would also give me video output.

Any suggestions / advice welcomed.

Just save up and get a new system.

I'll take a stab at it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130210

I wouldn't spend more than that, and the limiting factor may be if your cpu supports the card and system memory.

Look at 2400 or 2600 AGP. Look at your motherboard, PCI is usally white and really short. If it's AGP, it's longer and usually colored. You usually have multiple PCI slots.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] rder=PRICE

Get a 3650. It's the best bang for the buck for your system, at around $50. 2600 is good too, but cost a bit more because it's out of production and getting rare.

It's better to skip that fx5200. It's just too ancient. No support for Vista, dx10, and performance that will struggle even on non-gaming rendering.

don't get that 7600GT. for $50 you could get a lot better. An ATI HD2400pro or 2600pro would be good for you.

I agree with all that but does his system support it?

"I have an old computer, almost dare not to say it.. AMD Athlonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon 900 Mhz. 500 Mb memory."

You have an AGP port. Don't go with ATI. They have problem with their drivers since version 7.7 or 7.8. Go for NVidia. Good luck !