Would a new video card benefit me?

[Herdfan]

I just upgraded to WIN7 and am not 100% pleased with how things are presented on screen. My current video card is an ATI Radeon X1300 and there are no WIN7 drivers for it. My monitor is a Dell 2407WFP with a native res of 1920x1200.

Would upgrading to a new nVidia be beneficial? I am not a big gamer, so the latest with all the bells and whistles would be a waste.

Thanks,

[dettxw]

I had one of those that came in a new Dell once upon a time.
As I recall I was pissed that I had to replace it right away, I guess I didn't do my research before ordering and figured this nice PC would come with a good card.
It didn't - had to buy a better replacement to support my applications.
IIRC the big problem was that it wouldn't properly support the TV tuner card and HD.

So yeah, I vote for a new card.

[ncxcstud]

if it only has 128mb of ram...i'd upgrade it... try to find something with over 300MB or even 512MB of RAM on the video card...

you can get a decent video card for your needs for like 50-70 bucks...pretty good deal IMO

[LarryFlowers]

I just upgraded to WIN7 and am not 100% pleased with how things are presented on screen. My current video card is an ATI Radeon X1300 and there are no WIN7 drivers for it. My monitor is a Dell 2407WFP with a native res of 1920x1200.

Would upgrading to a new nVidia be beneficial? I am not a big gamer, so the latest with all the bells and whistles would be a waste.

Thanks,

You have a problem.. From AMD:

AMD says: "Note: AMD’s DirectX 9 ATI Radeon graphics accelerators are not officially supported under Windows 7. If the user chooses to, they can install the ATI Catalyst Windows Vista graphics driver under Windows 7. Please be aware that none of the new Windows 7 graphics driver (WDDM 1.1) features are supported (as the Windows Vista level graphics driver is limited to WDDM 1.0 level support). Using the ATI Catalyst Windows Vista driver under Windows 7 is not officially supported by AMD, and as such AMD will not provide any form of customer support for users running in this configuration."

The list is quite long and it includes ATI Radeon 9500 Series, ATI Radeon 9550 Series, ATI Radeon 9600 Series, ATI Radeon 9700 Series, ATI Radeon 9800 Series, ATI Radeon X300 Series, ATI Radeon X550 Series, ATI Radeon X600 Series, ATI Radeon X700 Series, ATI Radeon X800 Series, ATI Radeon X850 Series, ATI Radeon X1050 Series, ATI Radeon X1300 Series, ATI Radeon X1550 Series, ATI Radeon X1600 Series, ATI Radeon X1650 Series, ATI Radeon X1800 Series, ATI Radeon X1900 Series, ATI Radeon X1200 Series, ATI Radeon X1250 Series ATI Radeon X2100 Series and ATI Radeon Xpress Series.

I would suggest you switch to nVidia.. assuming a card like this would do just fine.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150354

[Herdfan]

You have a problem..

I would suggest you switch to nVidia.. assuming a card like this would do just fine.. [/URL]

I can get the Galaxy version of the 9500 GT or the PNY version of the GT 220 at my local BB for $100. What are the difference between the 9000 series and the 200 series. Both have WIN 7 drivers.

[ncxcstud]

I believe the GT220 is a newer card, thus probably a bit better...

But they might not be all that different. Either way you'll be happy with what you will get.

[Herdfan]

I picked up the new PNY GT 220 card. I have to say that was the easiest install of a computer part I have ever tried. The Dell is toolless so all I had to do was pop a couple of levers, swap cards and away I went. Five minutes tops.

Fired it back up and since the CD did not have the WIN 7 drivers, I went online to look for them, by the time I got to the PNY site, I got a pop-up message that the required drivers had been found and installed and I needed to reboot. WIN7 seems to be slick in that regard. Sure enough a reboot brought me back to a great looking screen. Far better than the old Radeon, even under the Vista driver designed for it. Plus I now have an HDMI out port.

Thanks for the input.

[kevinturcotte]

I have an ATI Radeon X700 Pro and I'm running the Windows 7 driver just fine. Not that upgrading isn't always good, but you CAN run the driver.

[Cholly]

I have a Radeon 9550 in my small form factor computer, and it's one of many items that Windows 7 upgrade advisor says it is compatible, but does not support Windows Aero. I'm not sure I can find an AGP 8X video card that will clear the AverMedia tuner card in the adjacent PCI slot. My Visioneer scanner software is not compatible, so I have to check to see if there are updates available. There are a myriad of other alerts that I got when running the advisor. Looks as thogh I can forget about installing Windows 7 on this system.

[moghedien]

I just upgraded to WIN7 and am not 100% pleased with how things are presented on screen. My current video card is an ATI Radeon X1300 and there are no WIN7 drivers for it. My monitor is a Dell 2407WFP with a native res of 1920x1200.

Would upgrading to a new nVidia be beneficial? I am not a big gamer, so the latest with all the bells and whistles would be a waste.

Thanks,

Is your current card an AGP? If your computer doesn't have PCI-e slot, your upgrade options will be limited...

[rudeney]

My Del Inspiron E1505 has an ATI X1300 graphics card and it works just fine on Windows 7. The only problem I have is that if the computer goes to sleep, sometimes when it wakes up, the screen won't come back on, but that's OK, because I never put it to sleep - I always use hibernate and that works fine.