New graphics card for old computer

[vikaschowdhry]

Hi
I have a two year old HP workhorse that runs on a Celeron 667 MHz Chip. Over the period I have added stuff like nice sound card, excellent speakers, a DVD/CD-RW drive.

But lately the computer started to show its age. Since a lot of personalization has gone into it and moreover I being a student and always short on cash(I am sure there are a lot of people out there who know exactly what I feel) I was trying to extract the last ounce of performance from the old chap. So I added a 7200 rpm hard disk, increased the RAM to a total of 374 MB(256 + 128) and made it dual boot with Win XP and Linux (RH 8). Now I do not do a lot of graphics intesive work. I mostly use it for lots of programming(Visual Studio and Emacs). And lots of net surfing. And since my old 14" monitor is starting to strain my eyes a lot , I ordered a new NEC 19" monitor(ACCUSYNC90 bargain basement price at dell -has yet to come). Now I was just wondering that if adding a graphics card(I had Radeon 7500 PCI in my mind)- it has Intel integrated graphics right now would help my system to run faster.

I notinced in linux that my CPU is at lots of times under 100% use while surfing some websites and also while doing compilation. Won't having a dedicated GPU that would deal with the display and offload some stuff from the aging CPU and also free up some of the RAM help?

I just need to extract another one year of life from my comp after which I will just put it to regular router work.

Thanks

Vikas

 

[Ghostdog]

I´m not sure it would work significantly faster, since GPUs mostly show their power in games, but a new craphics card will definetly go nicely along that new monitor. The Radeon 8500LE-cards are going for under 100$ these days, that would be a better choice than the 7500, ATI cards also have very decent image-quality.

If I were you I would start saving up for a new system, not just a new CPU but rather a new motherboard, CPU and graphics card. But that´s up to you.

<font color=red>I´m starting to feel like a real computer consultant.</font color=red>