Question about PCI video cards

[Sabre]

I bought a bargain-basement Dell for the kids to use some months back, a 1.4GHz Celeron, 400MHz bus, 128Mb memory, and on-board video (i.e. uses 32-64 MB of main memory for video).  It is slower in all respects than the 550MHz PIII it replaced, and I'm trying to figure out a cost effective way to boost performance.  My first thought was to get a video card for it, but when I opened up the case there was no AGP slot !!!  There are, however, three unsued PCI slots.  According to the manual, these are 120 pin, 32-bit slots, with the PCI bus speed listed at 33 MHz.  That seems rather slow, when the card itself is running at 200-250 MHz, so I question if a PCI video card is a smart move.

Now it seems I've got a couple of choices in the <$100 catagory:

a) Get a PCI video card (found a $39 GForce MX400, 64 Mb card);

b) Pick up a 256Mb memory module (slightly more money, but still do-able).

Eventually, I'd like to just toss the motherboard and get one with an AGP slot, but family vacation is taking priority on discrestionary spending.  Any thoughts, guys?

[Orig]

The GF4 MX would not do much for overall system performance if you're trying to upgrade this computer for non-gaming use, but memory (up to about 512 meg) ought to help out pretty much everything especially if running winXP.  The computer won't run many games without a vid card upgrade though, so if you want the kids to be able to play games you'll have to get the vid card too.

That celeron 1.4 is going to hold back the system no matter what other components you add.  You might just want to put the money in the bank until you can afford a bigger and more comprehensive upgrade.  If you really must make that particular computer faster though, memory would likely help out the most for non-gaming use.

[Rasker]

I just saw where Best Buy is selling Predator GF MX 440 PCI 64MB cards for $20 this week (after $30 mail-in rabate).

No doubt the big bottleneck on that machine is the onboard video setup, the graphics processor especially.  Adding more ram wont do diddly for you on that, especially regarding playing AH2.  I just added the mx 440 pci card to my Athlon 2000+ setup and went from barely playable to 40+ fps on medium settings.  I say  go for the 440 PCI card..

OTOH that ram figure is really low, especially if you are running Win XP on that machine, perhaps get another 128MB stick of ram with the $ you save on the vidcard by going to BestBuy

[MrLars]

A friend of mine was in the same situation a few months ago. I was going to sell him my old Gf3Ti card but when I opened his computer and found no AGP slot all I could say was WTF? When he bought it from Dell he specified that he was a gamer and they sold him on the onboard graphics capibilities.

After checking out price vs buck on PCI cards I suggested the Gf FX5200 or the Radeon 9200 PCI versions. He bought the Gf card and gets good performance with it but I don't know how it would do for AH since his gaming consists of the 'men in tights' type.

At Pricewatch I see them now for less than $85 plus shipping.