Recommended video card upgrade for Dell Celeron

[Guest]

My friend Mike just started gaming on his Dell celeron 466(?). He is complaining that MS Flight Simulator European Theater game play is "choppy". He wants to upgrade the motherboard video to a PCI card. I don't know what to recommend because I'm in the stone age with my PI-200 and generic Trident vid.

Any suggestions for around $100 or will he have to spend more?

Thanks to all that reply, cabbie.

 

[Crashman]

The GeForce2 MX is available in PCI on pricewatch.com for $102.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

Crashman,

Thanks for the help. I'll check out the card and let Mike know where to find it.

Obviously, we'll have to switch off the integated video -- do we have to do anything to free up the shared memory? Is it released automatically? After looking in the manual I'm not sure that the Dell uses shared memory I see in the manual that the vid subsystem is:
Intel 810 chip set with Dynamic Video Memory
and 4-MB display cache video.


I know when I changed my video card I first uninstalled the drivers. Are there drivers for the integrated controller that should be uninstalled?

Thanks, cabbie

 

[ejsmith2]

If I bought a Geforce2 card (any variety) that was PCI, I'd have to club myself with a pipe wrench several times; strictly out of respect for the whole human race. There are some things that are just wrong, no matter which direction you look at them from... =)

 

[Crashman]

I have actually seen motherboards for the 810 chipset that did not support dissabling the onboard video. If there is not a jumper for it, see if you can disable it in BIOS. If you cannot dissable it in BIOS, see if you can set the primary display adapter to PCI in BIOS.
If disabled, Windows should drop it automaticaly, and you get all the other memory back.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Crashman]

Hey, I just had to feel bad for a guy with the 810 chipset!

Suicide is painless...........