Do AGP cards improve performance for old PCs?

[fahadmq]

Greetings to all! This my first post on an Anandtech forum, and I have to say most of the people on this forum are very knowledgable and helpful when discussing anything technology related.

I have a ancient 6 1/2 year old PC that I use for the basics like internet browsing, word processing, music listening, and the occasional downloadable video. However, occasionally I feel my system lags especially in terms of resposiveness. An example of this would be having several browser windows open with the websites running flash and other complex animations (esp. in ads). Scrolling becomes slow, and sometimes a window just crashes. Expectedly, video playback performance lags a lot. I suspect that integrated video is causing a graphical botleneck for the system. My specs are:

Intel Pentium II 266 Mhz
160 MB Generic SDRAM PC66 (mobo supports 256 MB max)
4.8GB Maxtor HDD
SIS 6326 Integrated Video 4MB (mobo supports AGP 64 MB max)
Soundblaster AWE 64 Soundcard
Microsoft PCI Wireless Card 54G
Windows 98 (first edition, with all updates)

My question is will an AGP video card solve resolve the bottleneck? If so, which video card should I look into putting in this PC? Is the integrated video a bottleneck on the FSB/motherboard itself? Or, is there another underlying problem in the system that's causing the lagging like a slow FSB, HDD, etc. This isn't a emergency problem, but its annoying since sometimes the lag slows down the responsiveness where I have to restart the PC.

Thank you sincerely for your efforts and timely responses!

 

[Matthias99]

Intel Pentium II 266 Mhz
160 MB Generic SDRAM PC66 (mobo supports 256 MB max)

Um, I think this might have something to do with the lack of responsiveness, esp. while running multiple apps or trying to play video. I'm sure that ancient hard drive is also incredibly slow, making any paging you have to do even more painfully slow than normal.

Adding a discrete video card would free up a little bit more RAM, and might help a *bit* -- but seriously, you need a new computer. This thing's ancient.

 

[Peter]

Those old chipsets ran the RAM at the same frequency as the CPU. PII-266 is on 66 MHz bus, thus the RAM won't run any faster even if it could.

SiS 6326 _is_ discrete video with dedicated RAM, even if it is onboard. There were board models that actually did it this way.

 

[fahadmq]

Thank you to all for your swift help and responses! My understanding is that an AGP video card will hardly help the performance of the PC. You'll actually be surprised that the PC normally functions well as long as there's not a lot of multitasking.

But as Matthias said, it is time for a new computer. Personally if this computer lasted so long, I can certainly wait until dual-core hardware will come out!

 

[iversonyin]

for what you do, you don't need dual core. a budget PC(celeron/sempron) would be enough unless you want to get into gaming, video editing and such

 

[Sickpuppy]

Keep using it for 4 more years and you deserve a cray. ^^

 

[MadEye2]

Have you checked what's loading up on startup? Go to run and type in Msconfig, and choose the Start Up tab. You only really need ScanReg, SystemTray, Taskmon and possibly any programs your soundcard, modem, GPU need to run properly on startup, if any. Untag anything that's not important and go through your programs like MSN messenger that have options like "run on Windows start up".
Formatting your machine will help - my old K6-2 500 began creaking when flash and shockwave animations were loaded, but after formatting and reinstalling Windows it ran perfectly fine.
Oh, do a search for HOSTS FILE on google. A load of sites will come up with replacement hosts files - these will block tonnes of adverts and spyware infested sites. Some sites will tell you how to install it

 

[asm0deus]

you could make a better PC out of tin foil and peanut butter. no but seriously put 256MB PC66 (try to get it free out of some old junkers) an AGP card with 16MB (32MB would be better) you will notice significant performance increase. but the ultimate thing you can do to speed that rig up, is get an ATA133 PCI card, and an ATA133 hard drive, and windows will be blinging. almost to the point of being able to run XP (with all the eye candy and services turned off). i ran XP and played back DivX movies with a system similar to you, except with more memory (384MB), better video (rage pro), and ata100 (40GB) hard drive. but alot of used stuff is getting ultra cheap because of the new 64 bit hype. so check out the for sale forum you could probably find some deals.

 

[fahadmq]

Once again, thank you to all who responded to my post, even though it may sound a bit noobish Four more years and maybe a museum may be interested in the PC! This old PC is now a second PC after my family finally bought a new PC last year, which is great since I've resumed my PC gaming with the new one!

For the old PC, the only startup program I have is sound volume, and Explorer. I've never formatted my machine which may be the reason it still occasionally lags even though I have tweaked around with the OS and programs...I'll have to do that someday. The replacements HOSTS file is a terrific idea that never crossed my mind...should cut down those annoying flash ads.

Edit: Thanks asm0deus for the useful insight on your own old PC experience! I agree that its only worth upgrading if I can find the hardware dirt cheap!