Video card for Dell Dimen. 2400?

Dear Group,

I am building a system I plan to use for ADT 2004, and probably Photoshop at
the same time. I have a new Dell Dimension 2400 with this configuration:


- Pentium® 4 Processor at 2.20GHz with 400MHz front side bus
- Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
- Memory 256MB Shared DDR SDRAM at 333MHz (Performs at 266MHz for 400FSB
systems)
- 40GB ATA/100 Value Hard Drive
- Video Card Integrated Intel® 3D Extreme Graphics
- Network Interface Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
- 17 in E171FP Flat Panel Display
- Note: I will be upgrading the memory to 768mb
- The card slots are PCI.


I've been told that such a configuration won't do 3d very well with the
"Video card" integrated circuitry it has, and that I will need to add a
card. While it is possible that I will not need massive 3d capablities, I
will certainly need some. In addition, I am not sure yet how much 3d is too
much for the current circuitry, without an added card. In other words,
perhaps it will work as is.

So,

1) Can someone advise me about what PCI based card to choose, how powerful
it has to be and how much memory I should get on the card? How to know it
when I see it?

2) Can someone give a brief explanation of what functions depend on the card
and which don't? For example, I read that in the program Viz, rendering is
totally processor dependent and not at all dependent on the card, etc.

Thanks much,



Michael

 

in article BC0CBF48.127001%, Michael Meric at

 

card. While it is possible that I will not need massive 3d capablities,
I

Hard to give much of an answer when we don't know what you will be doing.
For my money, use the system and see if it starts to piss you off with being
slow.

Realtime 3d will use the card. Not sure about AutoCAD. Suspect it's clever
enough to use it for display. But from my experience, the way AutoCAD is
used for 3d there isn't that much to gain. If your model is complex and
slows the thing down during an orbit, just select a couple items and let it
display only them on orbit. Still, you've enough processor behind it all. I
wouldn't worry much.

Anything non-realtime (production renderings) is not the job of the video
card.

This is true. The cards are fast. The reason they are fast is because they
are bad. OK, in this day and age an "ugly" game display can look very very
nice. But it's a very carefully controlled nice and still not as nice as a
general purpose renderer is able to do in non-realtime.

Some people will tell you that there ARE render options available for 3d
cards and that blah blah blah. Dismiss them with a wave of your hand.