09-16-2003, 07:48 AM
Yup, what kandrathe said is pretty much it. You might be able to go a bit higher on the Radeon. Wholesale on the SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9200 128MB AGP8X (OEM) is Can$75, so you should be able to find it up there (London?) for around Can$100. The RADEON 9500 128MB DDR AGP8X TVO + DVI (OEM) is a big step up at Can$205.00. you could go totally loony with the RADEON 9800PRO 256MB DDR AGP8X TVO + DVI (OEM) at Can$608.00.
Something you can check without opening up the box is the BIOS setting that should be in Advanced->Chip Configuration, "Video Memory Cache Mode". Default will be UC (uncacheable), you will see an improvement if the on-board chipset supports the other option USWC (uncacheable, speculative write combining). If the chipset does NOT support that setting, you may need to do a hard BIOS reset to get the system to boot :S, make sure you know where the BIOS reset jumper is before you try it.
If you opt for the new ATI card, all of their current cards support USWC.
-rcv-
Something you can check without opening up the box is the BIOS setting that should be in Advanced->Chip Configuration, "Video Memory Cache Mode". Default will be UC (uncacheable), you will see an improvement if the on-board chipset supports the other option USWC (uncacheable, speculative write combining). If the chipset does NOT support that setting, you may need to do a hard BIOS reset to get the system to boot :S, make sure you know where the BIOS reset jumper is before you try it.
If you opt for the new ATI card, all of their current cards support USWC.
-rcv-