Thanks
Saab Cables first.
I got mine a few days before one of my kids got an 'identical' one. I obviously got one that was right on the cusp of going away from ribbon cables to the drives. Mine has no SATA connection. Son's has.
But, as you say, it's quite brisk PC and I was pleased with it until seeing the picture at 1920 X 1080. I concluded that although it
was better on XP, it was still nowhere near as good as when on the laptop with no dedicated video memory. Frankly, even on VGA, that was spectacular.
Are you saying that AGP 8X could be good enough but the particular card you have is crap?
My guess is that's right. The existing card it seems is listed as AGP X8, but clearly a cheap clone.
Also I noticed also that altering the settings to hi res seemed to slow the whole system down. I noticed that much more system memory was being used with the hi res. At first, I thought it was something else, but it was okay again after doing a Recover, and ridding the kit of the 1920 graphics drivers.
(Yes, that was the only way I could find to be offered >60hz refresh again! Nothing to uninstall, or any access to higher refresh rates or other monitors. Recovered, and it was fine. As mysterious as the arrival of the driver in the first place.
)
I think I'll have to go the way you say. I'm on W7, and if a card had adequate dedicated memory, I feel that 1 gig would be sufficient for my needs. However, a nice guy at CompSomewhere, said that AGP would not support a DVI interface. Is this always the case? And if so, does it matter that much?