Upgrading graphics?

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aekyall
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Upgrading graphics?

Post by aekyall »

I'm not a gamer but was thinking of uprating my 'on-board' graphics - what I already have is listed in the attachment. What I was thinking of upgrading to was a NVidia GeForce 210 card, 520Mhz core and 1 GB DDR. It's fairly cheap (around £20 Sterling - reflecting its limitations I suppose).Would I be likely to see any improvement? I have quite a lot of photo's I view/mess around with. I also get problems when viewing streaming - where my system seems to want to 'stick' quite often while it plays 'catch-up' (is this a graphics issue anyway?). You'll have guessed from the above that I'm not what you'd call an 'expert' :grin: Would be grateful for any/all comments!!
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Regards,
Keith

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stuck
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Re: Upgrading graphics?

Post by stuck »

I upgraded the on-board graphics on my main (but old) XP machine. I added a cheap (around £20) Radeon card. I can't say I've noticed any difference but that might be expected as I've not taken advantage of the multiple video outputs on the card by adding a second monitor. I haven't even upgraded the basic 19" LCD monitor I have! One day, when I have money, I will add a new monitor and then the investment in a dedicated card with DVI / HDMI will be apparent because the monitor will make use of one of these better than plain ol' vanilla VGA connectors.

When it comes to software, I may be wrong but I think you need to run software that can take advantage of the extra power of the GPU on the card, which is why gamers spend a fortune on graphics card. As far as I know Photoshop doesn't exploit a GPU.

To 'improve' your photo editing you need to invest in a good monitor, one with an IPS panel. You then need to profile the monitor with a gizmo like a Spyder but that's a whole new world...

The 'sticking' you report when streaming is almost certainly due to the limitations of your internet connection, the stream is being played faster than the data is arriving so the display pauses while the data catches up. I have a Smart TV that I connect to my modest/good (6-8Mbps) broadband connection with an Ethernet cable but BBC iPlayer still displays a spinning arrow every now and then when I stream HDTV.

So in summary, for £20 a new graphics card is unlikely to have any obvious impact but it will give you more flexibility over the types of monitor you can add.

Ken

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aekyall
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Re: Upgrading graphics?

Post by aekyall »

Thanks for the explanation Ken - good background info for me on graphics. Based on what you say I'll let things stay as they are for time being. And, my broadband (???) connection only runs at 4 Mbps tops (if I'm lucky!), so I now comprehend the recurring spinning arrow! :thankyou:
Regards,
Keith