NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100/200

[chrisy]

Hi i am having trouble viewing HD videos on my pc and i have been told i need a new graphics card.
These are some details of my pc

Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100/200
System model American Megatrends Inc. K7S41GX 1.0
Processor 1000 megahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache
Memory 1024 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

I know some of these are below average but does anyone know if i can buy a newer version of my graphics card or would it not work?

Thank you, i hope someone knows
Chris

 

[masteryoda34]

There's no point putting money into a system that old.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I assume anything that old has AGP, possibly AGP 2x, not 4x or 8x.

Hopefully, that system also has PCI slots.

I would look for a PCI 8400GS card, it should be able to decode H264 in hardware.

http://www.amazon.com/Sparkle-GeForce-8400GS-Graphics-SFPC84GS512U2LP/dp/B001HA91NY

Granted, that card costs more than your entire system is worth these days.

Edit: This is your board. It DOES have an AGP 4x/8x 1.5v slot. See my second post for a card that would work.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=K7S41GX

 

[Maximilian]

Heh "below average" dosent quite cut it to describe that system.

No it will not do HD video at all. A quick google found this similar discussion:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/306938-15-video-graphics-card

So it looks like:

- Dosent matter what AGP card you get the CPU is too slow
- Even if that discussion is wrong an AGP card would likely be cost prohibitive at this point

You need a new comp :thumbsup:

 

[PhoenixEnigma]

That's more than a "little" below average - I was honestly expecting some kind of memory lane thread when I opened this.

If you can find a Radeon HD2400 Pro or HD 2600 series as an AGP card, and get it for free, it might be worth it. Maybe. Those should offload the decoding from that poor, tired CPU.

Really, though, what masteryoda34 said - at this point, putting any money into that system is nigh impossible to justify. A Brazos nettop would be more expensive, but a serious upgrade, do everything you want, and draw less power too.

 

[chrisy]

Yeah everything is very fast on my computer because i have got it upgraded a few months ago. But it's just a small problem playing those damn HD (+1000) video files and i also use ******** converter. That's the only thing i need the better graphics card for. I don't play games....
Not sure what to do...if i were to buy another similar graphics card or newer model would it work?

 

[yhelothar]

My mom got a computer from the dumpster 3 years ago that's about 500% faster than your computer. I'm sorry but you made a mistake upgrading that. It's time to cut your losses and find a replacement.

Here's a decent upgrade to your whole system for really cheap though.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Asus-P4P800...aultDomain_0&hash=item2a190de778#ht_500wt_949

You could probably find quite a few of those combos on ebay for really cheap.

 

[masteryoda34]

Yeah everything is very fast on my computer because i have got it upgraded a few months ago.

 

[Kevmanw430]

Not trying to be a troll, but I'm starting to wonder if this was supposed to be posted 5 years ago.

Anyways, as everyone else said, get a new computer. The only thing that makes sense is finding an AGP card for free.

What OS are you running?

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you can find a Radeon HD2400 Pro or HD 2600 series as an AGP card, and get it for free, it might be worth it. Maybe. Those should offload the decoding from that poor, tired CPU.

That reminds me, I do have a VisionTek Radeon 2600 Pro AGP 8x card. Whether the AGP slot in his current motherboard would work with that card, I have no idea. The voltages on an AGP 2x slot are different than a 4x/8x AGP slot. (Edit: This WOULD work in his board. Power supply permitting.)

I'd want $40 + $10 ship for it though.

Edit: It requires a 6-pin PCI-E power connector from your PSU though, it's a fairly beefy card. I can include a molex-to-PCI-E power adaptor.

Edit: PS. I have S478 P4 3.2Ghz with HT (I think it's with HT), 800FSB. I would send it to you for the cost of shipping, if you are in US. You could get a used P4 S478 mobo cheap somewhere.

Not to turn this into a FS thread, but OP, if you live in the US of A, please PM me. I would like to make you a really good deal on a newer mobo/CPU/RAM combo, that has a PCI-E slot, so you could get something like a 5450, which has hardware video decoding support.

Edit: PS. OP, if that current computer was a recent upgrade, just for entertainment's sake, what did you have before?

Edit: For the same money as that 8400GS PCI card at Amazon.com that I linked to, the 2600Pro AGP 8x card would be much better. See here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...2008-q3/Sum-of-FPS-Benchmarks-Totals,795.html

Edit: I came across one of my own posts on a different site, and that reminded me, ATI and Adobe are artificially restricting Flash video HW acceleration to ATI's newer cards, the 4000-series and later, and the HD3000-series IGPs. However, if you are using MPC-HC, the 2600Pro does have HW accell for H264 (blu-ray rips, MKVs), even if ATI/Adobe don't expose that support for flash videos.

PM me about that CPU/mobo/RAM combo. Once you're on a modern PCI-E -based system, then you can choose any modern video card on the market. A 5450 would do you good then.

 

[skipsneeky2]

The first pc part i ever purchased at frys was a mx400 back in 2006 that went into a hp vectra vl420 that replaced a ati ragepro.

I know the card sucked bad enough when i dropped it into my first custom build it just wouldn't play BF2 while its replacement being a 6200le made it happen so the mx400 sat for about god who knows maybe a year in a spare parts bin till i got bored and pulled off the heatsink and later on i just tossed it.

 

[Cerb]

Hi i am having trouble viewing HD videos on my pc and i have been told i need a new graphics card.

You need new everything, for HD video. Even with hardware offloading, your CPU would not be able to keep up, depending on compression ratio and resolution.

That PC would have been OK in 2001. It looks like the board is from 2004, at which time it would have been a low-end PC, to get rid of spare Socket A CPUs littering warehouses.

Yeah everything is very fast on my computer because i have got it upgraded a few months ago.

No, it's not. It may faster than it was, but a proper generational upgrade will make your jaw drop...and let you watch modern videos.

Personally, I would consider an Athlon64 X2 2.2GHz (4400+?) or so, with >=2GB RAM, a minimum, and then add a good low-end video card to that. Right now, for the money, you'd get more with a used Core 2 Duo box, however (C2D == Phenom II X2 == Athlon II X2 > Athlon64 X2, at any given GHz).

 

[pauldun170]

Hi i am having trouble viewing HD videos on my pc and i have been told i need a new graphics card.
These are some details of my pc

Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100/200
System model American Megatrends Inc. K7S41GX 1.0
Processor 1000 megahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache
Memory 1024 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

I know some of these are below average but does anyone know if i can buy a newer version of my graphics card or would it not work?

Thank you, i hope someone knows
Chris

2001 - Welcome to 2012
If you would like to increase performance...perhaps an Itouch or cell phone...

 

[skipsneeky2]

2001 - Welcome to 2012
If you would like to increase performance...perhaps an Itouch or cell phone...

That is mean,the op simply wants to watch videos more then likely on youtube.

My spare machine has a pentium d 820 in it op on vista with 1gb of ram and it happens to handle watching any videos just fine and even some gaming with older titles prior to 2007.

Craigslist usually has a trio of computers for around $200 that will more often times have a better model pentium d a amd dual core and i even saw a core 2 duo pc with 2gb of ram last week that came with a lcd.

Any pentium d or better model pc for about $200 will easily be sufficient enough and if you shop around these machines can be had for about $150.

 

[-Slacker-]

Yep, either find a free or almost free agp video card, or get a new PC. Sorry to say, but that rig doesn't deserve anymore money put into it. That's because old hardware that can run on it hasn't gone down in price linearly and is about as expensive as much newer, more powerful stuff, so anything you would buy new would be grossly overpriced. The second reason is that weak CPUs (and yours is about as weak as they get) will bottleneck video cards that are too fast, and in your case I can think of a lot of video cards that are (most or all of them). What this does is that it won't allow you to use your video card to the fullest or even to a significant extent because your cpu drags it down. You may not be able to play hd content either way.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've got an A64 S939 4000+ (2.4Ghz single-core, overclockable), an MSI K8N Neo4 H (Nforce4, with both SATA and IDE, and PCI-E), 2x1GB DDR that I could let the OP have for cheap, then he could drop in a 5450 or possibly even something better.

I don't know about running Windows 7 on an NForce4 board, some of them are hit or miss whether or not Win7 will boot on these boards.

XP runs fine though. Except my experience with ATI drivers on XP and a 780G mobo, is that ATI drivers don't HW accelerate H264 on XP, only on Windows 7.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Hi i am having trouble viewing HD videos on my pc and i have been told i need a new graphics card.
These are some details of my pc

Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100/200
System model American Megatrends Inc. K7S41GX 1.0
Processor 1000 megahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache
Memory 1024 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

I know some of these are below average but does anyone know if i can buy a newer version of my graphics card or would it not work?

Thank you, i hope someone knows
Chris

Hi Chris,

Getting this card would be able to play HD videos flawlessly, even on your not-so-recent computer. I upgraded a similar computer so I speak from experience. Price may be a little bit high though.

 

[chrisy]

Well i live in the UK not the US and thx for all your replies. Now i know more about my pc and what i should do. I am not really high tech about computers but when i got my pc it was second hand from an office probably about 7-8 years ago and over the years when something was wrong like the power supply and the motherboard i just got a new one installed by a local guy.
I also convert videos to DVD quite a lot using a software but even that struggles with the HD files, frame rate on lower quality files would go through at 8-10 per second. But with the HD usually it cant work and crashes. Do you think it's my slow CPU which causes that?

 

[chimaxi83]

Well i live in the UK not the US and thx for all your replies. Now i know more about my pc and what i should do. I am not really high tech about computers but when i got my pc it was second hand from an office probably about 7-8 years ago and over the years when something was wrong like the power supply and the motherboard i just got a new one installed by a local guy.
I also convert videos to DVD quite a lot using a software but even that struggles with the HD files, frame rate on lower quality files would go through at 8-10 per second. But with the HD usually it cant work and crashes. Do you think it's my slow CPU which causes that?

It's definitely your CPU, but overall your whole system will severely limit what you can do with the latest software.

Do you have a budget for upgrading?

 

[bryanW1995]

Well i live in the UK not the US and thx for all your replies. Now i know more about my pc and what i should do. I am not really high tech about computers but when i got my pc it was second hand from an office probably about 7-8 years ago and over the years when something was wrong like the power supply and the motherboard i just got a new one installed by a local guy.
I also convert videos to DVD quite a lot using a software but even that struggles with the HD files, frame rate on lower quality files would go through at 8-10 per second. But with the HD usually it cant work and crashes. Do you think it's my slow CPU which causes that?

You will be amazed at how much better anything new would be for you. Even just buying another used computer like you did when you bought this would garner lightyears' improvement. I just donated a couple of modern computers to my daughter's school, they had computers like yours before. Let's just say that the other kindergarten teachers are a wee bit jealous of my daughter's teacher...:ninja:

edit: I had a geforce 2 gts back in the day, probably 10-12 years ago. I retired it in 2003, then found it buried in my closet in 2007 or so. I think I just gave it to a friend eventually. You might be able to find a more modern agp card for something pretty close to free, just keep your eyes peel in the fs/ft forums, ebay, etc etc.

 

[Stuka87]

Well i live in the UK not the US and thx for all your replies. Now i know more about my pc and what i should do. I am not really high tech about computers but when i got my pc it was second hand from an office probably about 7-8 years ago and over the years when something was wrong like the power supply and the motherboard i just got a new one installed by a local guy.
I also convert videos to DVD quite a lot using a software but even that struggles with the HD files, frame rate on lower quality files would go through at 8-10 per second. But with the HD usually it cant work and crashes. Do you think it's my slow CPU which causes that?

The system as a whole is quite slow, but the CPU is certainly the largest bottle neck.

Even in the UK, you should be able to find a budget system that would blow the doors off your current one for pretty cheap. You can find a used one, or go to your local electronics store and get an HP or the like for a few hundred quid that should do everything you do now, only 1000 times faster

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sorry to find out you're in the UK. I could have hooked you up.

Seriously, though, if you can possibly find a computer based around a Core i3-2100 chip, 4-8GB of RAM, and use the onboard video provided by the CPU, then you would be able to take advantage of Intel's new "QuickSync" technology, for converting video files. It uses the graphics chip portion of the CPU to do that, it's hardware accelerated.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/8

I would say, that kind of rig would cost $300-400 US at places like BestBuy or Staples. I don't know what stores you have over there.

Even an older Core2Duo or Core2Quad socket 775 mobo/CPU/RAM combo would do you well, and you should be able to find those used all over the place, now that everyone else is upgrading from them. I would think that you could find them for $100 or less.

 

[Maximilian]

Heres one in the UK that beats the hell out of what you currently have:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Systems/Home+...ual-Core+Next+Day+Desktop+PC+?productId=48191

 

[PhoenixEnigma]

Well i live in the UK not the US and thx for all your replies. Now i know more about my pc and what i should do. I am not really high tech about computers but when i got my pc it was second hand from an office probably about 7-8 years ago and over the years when something was wrong like the power supply and the motherboard i just got a new one installed by a local guy.
I also convert videos to DVD quite a lot using a software but even that struggles with the HD files, frame rate on lower quality files would go through at 8-10 per second. But with the HD usually it cant work and crashes. Do you think it's my slow CPU which causes that?

At a guess, the crashing is from running out of memory - with enough RAM, you should still be able to transcode HD video, albeit at a truly glacial rate with that CPU.

As others have suggested, it's probably time for a new system. I'm not sure how prices compare across the pond, but here $200-250 would get you a similarly used system, but one that would be fanatically faster - I'd expect to see on the order of 10x the speed when you're converting videos. An actually new system could be several times faster yet.

 

[Ovven]

A modern cell phone can run rings around the OP's pc. Frankly, you're better off just cutting your losses and buying a used PC on ebay, or the cheapest one in store. Whatever you get, it will be at least several times faster than what you have.

For example this new one http://h40059.www4.hp.com/uk/commercial-desktops/product.php?id=LH134EA&experience=direct will do pretty much everything that you ask of it, if you don't want to mess with cheaper, used computers.