Radeon 9250

[Weather_Man]

The FX series Geforce are not DirectX9 cards, but I don't think there are any PCI cards that are DX9. Good choice on the 5700 PCI card, it will cream any integrated graphics.

Yes, they are dx9 compatible. link

ATI 9200/9250 are not.

[stevewilson]

Weather_man: Thanks for the code, I now have it in my sig and I have put one on a test page for my website that has the state emblem. I'll be moving it to the main page shortly.

Thanks again for the info on the 5700 vid card, I'll be getting it early next week and let you all now how it works out for me.

[the_autopilot]

The FX series Geforce are not DirectX9 cards, but I don't think there are any PCI cards that are DX9. Good choice on the 5700 PCI card, it will cream any integrated graphics.

The geforce fx series of cards are dx9. In fact, they'e the only dx9 cards available in PCI to my knowledge.

[Skligmund]

That's right, I've been through so many generations of Nvidia cards, I forgot when DX9 came out, my bad.  ;D

[congo]

I think you are throwing good money after bad and should be looking at a motherboard upgrade rather than dumping more cash into that lemon system.

PCI graphics are over.

A mainboard is cheap and takes under an hour to install. You made a mistake, get over it and get a decent mainboard with a graphics slot. I'm using my firm smiley face here.....

[stevewilson]

Congo,

Your absolutly right, I made a mistake buying this computer without checking to see if it had a PCIe slot or at least an AGP slot. I let the cpu speed influance me.

So now I don't have to much of a choice as there is only one PCI slot and now PCIe or AGP slots.

But I may be in luck. The wife has informed me that she wants to replace her 3 yr old computer and since my new one is only a couple months old, I'm thinking maybe I can talk her into taking mine and get one that has what I need.

Cross your fingers.  ::)

[Skligmund]

Good Luck! If you get it, you'll be flabbergasted!

[congo]

So now I don't have to much of a choice as there is only one PCI slot and now PCIe or AGP slots.

I guess "now" is a typo which means "no" in the second now above. (geeks can actually count to three but have extremely short attention spans)

So I guess you looked inside the PC then.

Could you please post the exact manufacturer and model no. of that particularly crappy piece of hardware to warn others here please?

[stevewilson]

Congo, It is a T5026 emachine, I wouldn't go so far as calling it "crappy". Stright out of the box, I can run FS9 with heavy ai traffic at KLAX or KJFK and sliders at max, I still get around 25 fps, with out any stuttering. The graffics aren't as good as my 9600xt and I can't run dual monitors.

The big draw back is that it doesn't have the PCIe or AGP slots. The price was $399 US.

Now for the really good news. The wife needs to replace her aging machine and has agreed to take this one and I can get a new one. Trust me, it will have a PCIe slot and at least 2 gb of ram, along with a 6600 or 6800gt vid card.

I'll keep you all posted.

[congo]

I meant the motherboard itself. You listed an Intel Augsburg as your mainboard, and when you want to know anything REAL about a PC, you go straight to the mainboard specs and you find out everything you need to know............... usually.

The exception is when "crappy" companies like eMachines somehow manage to take a perfectly good chipset like your's................

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/915gv/

.......a great little mainboard like this "real" Intel Augsburg.........



............. and turn it into a cheap pile of junk by ripping out the PCIe support and other great features.

If I knew you had an eMachines PC in the first place I wouldn't have bothered to try and help, as it's a complete waste of my time trying to research these products. They are developed secretly because they are designed to "rip off" the masses. There are no official specs available that I can find and the mainboard doesn't exist because no-one would ever want to admit to producing them.

All I was ever trying to do was to determine whether or not you had actually looked inside the PC to see if it actually had a graphics expansion slot or not, a fact I'm still completely in the dark about, but it doesn't matter now, as I finally know what the sad truth is.

Let this be a warning to any other simmers out there who are considering buying a pre-built, name brand PC....... This is a very typical end result of succombing to advertising hype and not researching the product thoroughly before purchase.

My motto is "Chipset is Everything" and companies like eMachines are here to make a fool of us all.

nuff said.

[the_autopilot]

Many big name OEM's will use variations of popular motherboards. These mobo have certain features removed or disabled to make the board cheaper. Be aware that almost all OEM name brand computers have modified mobo's which contain crippled BIOS's (the BIOS works fine, but many features are disabled like CPU speed select, etc.); in addition most OEM's will not offer BIOS updates

I've seen dell mobo's which have different core voltages running on the board and using proprietary connectors for the PSU and IDE connections. I had a friend whose Sony case carried a non-atx proprietary Sony standard PSU; he had to buy a new case just to upgrade his PSU (to power a new vid card of his). I've seen a Dell with a proprietary AGP slot before (though it was an old computer which had an nvidia riva vid card). I once saw a Median (i think its a german brand) computer which had all its unused PCI slots disabled.

My advice, open the comp before you buy and see what BS lurks within.

[Skligmund]

SONY is the only company I know that uses real motherboards and hardware, they just put a crappy BIOS in it. The BIOS can be flashed to the real version usually though.....

[the_autopilot]

SONY is the only company I know that uses real motherboards and hardware, they just put a crappy BIOS in it. The BIOS can be flashed to the real version usually though.....

Well, they don't do it recently. My friend recently wanted to upgrade his vid card and his PSU. His mobo was a asus mobo, but it was modifed physically so no asus bios could be used; everyhting under the sun was disabled. The PSU was a non-atx PSU and we had to mount his new PSU on the outside of his case. We couldn't set the AGP aperature size to 128mb and now he has to go out and get a new mobo because the mobo won't let us enable AGP 8x instead of 4x.

[congo]

It's just suddenly occurred to me why Alienware PC's have been so popular.

They must have been the first, or one of the first, mass producers of "Real PC's", but look at the price they ask!

"Pay us double and we won't rip you off!" Kinda like a protection racket.......