The old Dell was using a AGP GeForce4 MX420 64Mb. Groups of lines started appearing all over the screen. The inside was relatively dust free. The 420 doesn't have a fan. The temperature was OK. I guess after ~8 years the card's time had come.
So what to replace it with? Consensus around many forums was a AGP 7600GS. It can be a hard beast to find if you don't want to pay retail prices.
One thing was also said: don't get an x or x1 series ATI card since there usually don't work in older Dells. Using anything bigger or faster like x1900 etc would not work since the Dell 4550 PSU is only 250w!
Lo and behold a ATI x1650 PRO was available (Craig's list) for $60 cdn. I figured if it didn't work I could resell it.
So i put it in and I got a screen. A good first step. I had already D/L'ed the drivers from ATI.
Ah now the rub. the drivers would not install. The monitor was working but using system software. Best resolution was VGA. The error I was getting was: " Try installing a standard VGA driver first" WTF! The ATI site said to reinstall the motherboard chipset drivers. The properties page and GPU-Z both could not recognize the existence of the x1650.
So I hit the Dell support site. There is such an update. Hallelujah! Installed rebooted and sweet fuck all. I spent 3 hours trying to get it to work. Always the same damned error.
Take deep breath and a couple of days off. Remembered Omega drivers. I had nothing to lose. Well the Omega drivers worked where the ATI drivers failed abysmally. So far there doesn't seem to be a PSU problem with the 512Mb memory on the card. I don't have that many peripherals on that Dell.
So there is hope if you have an older Dell with an AGP slot and you find yourself with an x1 series upgrade.
(There reason I didn't get anything more recent like a HD2600 is that the rest of the system would bottleneck thus crippling the younger's card performance.
Yes there is hope!
So what to replace it with? Consensus around many forums was a AGP 7600GS. It can be a hard beast to find if you don't want to pay retail prices.
One thing was also said: don't get an x or x1 series ATI card since there usually don't work in older Dells. Using anything bigger or faster like x1900 etc would not work since the Dell 4550 PSU is only 250w!
Lo and behold a ATI x1650 PRO was available (Craig's list) for $60 cdn. I figured if it didn't work I could resell it.
So i put it in and I got a screen. A good first step. I had already D/L'ed the drivers from ATI.
Ah now the rub. the drivers would not install. The monitor was working but using system software. Best resolution was VGA. The error I was getting was: " Try installing a standard VGA driver first" WTF! The ATI site said to reinstall the motherboard chipset drivers. The properties page and GPU-Z both could not recognize the existence of the x1650.
So I hit the Dell support site. There is such an update. Hallelujah! Installed rebooted and sweet fuck all. I spent 3 hours trying to get it to work. Always the same damned error.
Take deep breath and a couple of days off. Remembered Omega drivers. I had nothing to lose. Well the Omega drivers worked where the ATI drivers failed abysmally. So far there doesn't seem to be a PSU problem with the 512Mb memory on the card. I don't have that many peripherals on that Dell.
So there is hope if you have an older Dell with an AGP slot and you find yourself with an x1 series upgrade.
(There reason I didn't get anything more recent like a HD2600 is that the rest of the system would bottleneck thus crippling the younger's card performance.
Yes there is hope!
The US economy is a giant Ponzi scheme. And 'to big to fail' is code speak for 'niahnahniahniahnah 99 percenters'