Video card needed -older compaq presario

[jjosserand]

Hello, I'm helping a friend who has an older secondary computer...a Compaq Presario SR1265CL computer, with 512MB memory. Processor Athlon(b)XP 3200+ 2.2GHZ Socket A 462. The thing crawls, due in part to lack of a video card in my view. Can anyone suggest some older video card models #'s that I should search to purchase (perhaps used) to let her nurse this machine along a while longer. AGP and PCI slots available. No gaming done, but a lot of still photos displayed.
Motherboard Asus A7V8X-LA

Thanks

 

[Wolygon]

Its not the graphics card.

The best thing to do would to be to buy more RAM. This would give you a large increase in performance.

Also a large reason why its so slow could be because of Windows being old. Windows gets clogged up with registry entries over time and slows down. To remedy this you can reinstall windows or or could try a registry cleaner. Many people do not like registry cleaners though, if you are going to use one then I would suggest CCleaner.

With reinstalling you should make sure you can find drivers for the on board graphics and co. If your running XP then it they are not automatically installed and some can be VERY hard to find. Take this into account when reinstalling, maybe you have the original driver disc (if they come with them).

Hope that helps.

 

[suat]

What is the OS on the machine ? 512 Meg is not bad for Windows XP.

Maybe there are a large number of start-up items accumulated over time that cause lag. CCleaner may help clean garbage but it may not help with start-up entries. You may have to clean them manually within CCleaner.

 

[jjosserand]

More info:

The OS is XP Home. I do intend to slam another 512 K memory into it (for 1GB total) ($25) I also intend to run a cleaner and chop off at least one start-up programs, and otherwise do some program pruning, but I can tell part of the hang up is the writing to screen, which I figure an actual screen accelerator would help. I'm figuring that if I can pick up an accelerator card for $40-$70 I haven't thrown away too much money.

Any model # suggestions?

 

[jjosserand]

Best answer selected by jjosserand.