[Permonic]

I have P4 at 1.6 MHz, 256 MB RAM and 17" LCD display. Video card is Maxtor Millenium G400, with 32 MB. I don't play games. I have TV card and I watch movies in Video CD format (popular format here in Asia). However I plan to buy a DVD-ROM and therefore I need an advice whether to keep the current graphic card or buy a new one.

If the latter, I don't want to buy an overkill, I mention again I DON'T PLAY GAMES. For DVD movies, would 64 MB SDRAM be ok? Or go up to 128 MB SDRAM? AGP slot on my motherboard is 4x (1.5V only).

Please recommend specific types (Asus, ATI, nVIDIA, GigaByte, ...)

Thank you in advance for your advice.

 

[refault]

If you want a quick, cheap upgrade to make sure you get the best quality out of your DVD-ROM drive, pick up a BBA ATi 9600 128mb (should go for like $60-70 now days.)

 

[dd3mon]

Your current video card will display DVDs perfectly well. To the same quality as the ATi IMO. Matrox and ATi offer the best DVD and TV-out quality, the difference is negligible (I've owned both).

No need to spend any extra $ here, your machine can handle software dvd playback easily, so hardware dvd-decoding isn't necessary either.

-dd3mon

 

[terrymx]

i think your card is fine with the purpose. the ati all-in-wonder is special design for tv and movie watching, since you connect source from outside to the computer and from the computer to outside. they tend to be expensive. an 'ati aiw radeon 7500 ve' goes for $100.

 

[lan]

I'd keep the card. The G400 is an excellent 2D card.

Are you watching on your LCD monitor? If so I would only upgrade maybe to get a DVI connection.

 

[bootman]

Yup, since you are not a gamer your current card is fine.

I would spend the money on getting more system ram.
256 to 512.

 

[wallijonn]

I really like my Pioneer A06 +/-RW DVD burner. You might want to get the A08 model as it is 8x.

I have the G400 Max and I will never get rid of it. The video program is much better than the nVidia programs. It used to be that people hated how the Matrox player always remembered the point at which it was stopped. Now that my Panasonic S55 has the same feature I do not think I could live without the memory feature.

get 512M if you are using WXP.

 

[ch1nkster]

If you want to go uber cheap, you can get a ATi 9100 pci card for about $30 which is pretty good.

 

[Permonic]

Yes, that's Philips LCD with a DVI/VGA but currently I use VGA, do you think it would be worth to upgrade from VGA to DVI? Would I notice the difference between 32MB and 64MB?

Anyway, thank you all for your recommendations. Today I bought additional 256 MB RAM.

 

[lan]

The large memory you see on video cards is mostly for playing 3D games. You won't notice even 16MB displaying 2D.

G400 has good VGA out. DVI will be better but may not be that much more noticible. I would just get a cheap AGP card with DVI.