First post, by FFXIhealer
Built a Frankenstein's system out of parts lying around. Here's the current setup:
CASE: Compaq Presario SR1222NX Micro-ATX (still has Pentium 4 sticker and Windows XP stickers on it)
Motherboard: Intel G45M03 pulled from a Dell Vostro 220
CPU: Intel Pentium E2220 "Conroe" (LGA775, 2.4 GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 2-cores, no HT, 1.15Volts, 65W TDP)
Memory: 2GB (2x1GB modules) DDR2-667
HDD: Seagate 80GB 7200RPM SATA
OS: Windows XP Home Premium (32-bit, fully updated)
Any good suggestions for a PCIe graphics card? The MB supports PCIe x16 @1.0 speeds, but graphics cards at the start of PCIe 2.0 could barely use all the bandwidth available @1.0 speeds, since they were just barely starting to use GDDR3.
I kinda had my eye looking at the GeForce 8800 GTS, even the 512 MB revision that ran cooler with better clock rates, more shader cores, etc. But this is a Windows XP system and I have no intention of putting Windows Vista or Windows 7 on it. I MIGHT look into pushing the RAM to DDR2-800 since the MB supports it, but if I do that I might as well switch the CPU out to the Core 2 Duo E7500 I have @2.9 GHz in order to pick up the increased cache size (3MB L2).
Kind of a discussion generator - pros and cons of different video cards. Looks like I can get an 8800 GTS off Ebay for around $30 USD.
