OK, so my wife is running a Cel 633 e-machine with crappy onboard 1MB video and 256MB RAM.

I want to buy her a 64MB PCI video card (no AGP slot) so she can watch DVDs and use her home design software without locking up.

www.compgeeks.com has a Visiontek nvidia GeForce4 MX420 on sale for $56.

Is this a good card? Is it buggy? Has anyone used it? Can they point me to reviews? It probably won't be used for much gaming, but if she likes it's performance it may.

Thanks for any input. My other option is paying about $10 more and buying a Radeon 7000 at Wal-Mart.

Joe

 

Geforces and Radeons are both great cards... I look at geforces as being the frame rate masters and radeons as having the better picture quality....

 

Reviews for Vidcards can be found at.... www.tomshardware.com www.anandtech.com www.madonion.com and I forgot the url for 3dguru....oh yeah www.guru3d.com In fact heres the guru review for that nvidia.

http://www.guru3d.com/review/creative/geforce4mx420/
this is the creative labs version, but most manufactures perform the same, its the chipset that differs.

Brian

 

I have the agp version of that card in my machine and have been very pleased (paid more than $56 for it, too!). Only difficulty I had was that the card MUST use IRQ 11 which conflicted with my sound card. Had to force sound card to use other irq. Other than that no problems and good performance.

 

Thanks everybody. I ordered the Visiontek. I checked and the only thinkg on her IRQ 11 is ACPI and I can shut that off, right?

I'll let you know how it works out.

Joe

 

Ok, I got the card installed on my wife's PC yesterday and it seems to work fine (fullscreen Quicktime movies with no flicker!), BUT... now the PC won't shut down. When you select shutdown, the screen goes black but it doesn't power down and you have to hold the power button for 5 seconds to reset it.

I went into the setup and checked and the onboard controller is still there. I uninstalled it, and it shut down. But when I started the computer again, Windows saw the onboard controller and reinstalled the the drivers for it.

In the BIOS setup the only option is to choose what the default controller is used PCI or AGP. Since there are no AGP slots on the board, PCI is chosen, but both the card and the onboard are PCI controllers.

It is an eMachines eTower 633 Celeron if that helps.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks,

Joe

 

Recheck your bios setup, has to be a way to disable the on-board video.

 

nVidia is a great video card type. Also featured in many Dells (but just because that - it dosen't make NVidia better)

As for the shutdown problem. You might, if experienced, try this: http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/251/

If you're not familiar with the Windows Registry- don't.

 

Disable with mb jumper settings! See emachines support.

 

I have (2) similar eMachines (633ids) and I agree that the proper way to add external video card is to disable onboard video via a BIOS selection. I have not added cards to them, so no experiences in that area, but I can, if needed, relocate the motherboard manufacturer data which I found a few months ago. If you want the information, send me a private message.

 

Good catch, 2000; forgot that some boards have a jumper for that.

 

You mentioned turning off ACPI earlier. did you disable it? If your going for soft power off that will effect it.

Brian

 

Go to Device Mangler, then DONT remove the device, DISABLE it. If you remove it, as you have found, PNP will autodetect it. Just disable it and Windows won't try to use it.

 

That was the first thing I tried. It disabled, but it still wouldn't shut down.
Thanks though.
Joe

 

Actually didn't turn off ACPI. Well, I did in the BIOS before installing the card, but then it wouldn't boot up properly. Got an error saying "bios.vxd" not found (or something similar). COuldn't find the file anywhere. So I went back into the BIOS and turned ACPI back on and everything went back to normal. There were no conflicts when I installed the card. ACPI for PCI sharing is ok to have on IRQ 11 according to the nvidia website. So now on IRQ 11 I have ACPI for PCI sharing, the GeForce card, and the Intel 82810 PCI graphics controller.

Thanks,
Joe

 

From the eMachines site

http://www.emachines.com/support/vie...faq=1004986892

Cognac eTower 566i, 566i2, 633id, 633ids, 633irx, 667ix, 633is, 733i, 800

Built-in AGP graphics controller Cognac
Jumper Settings No Jumpers
Enabled (blank)
Disabled Auto detect

Sorry for the formatting, but this says that there ar eno jumpers on the board it says I have. However, it also says it's a built-in AGP controller, which is what I assumed (and why I figured selecting PCI in the BIOS would auto detect the PCI card and forget about the onboard), but when it re-boots after I remove the onboard from the system, it sees it as an Intel PCI graphics controller, not AGP. Hence, my confusion.

Thanks
Joe

 

Ok, I was also confused by the eMachines site... I thought it read jumpers (which it said jumpers in one part of the topic), but after rading further, I saw the section for the cognac mobo said autodetect..... after I PMed you, naturally. OOps.
The mobo was made by TriGems, but I can't find their site right now.
As for the 1 meg graphics level, there is a setting somewhere (in WinME) which allows you to change that memory to 8 megs.... I did this immediately upon getting the first machine, but cannot find that setting right now as I'm 40 miles from it.
EDIT: http://www.elhvb.com/mboards/ /EDIT

 

Found trigems website, but nothing shown for older motherboards.... I'd say use the the elhvb site....

 

That's ok. I was confused myself the first time I looked there.
Thanks for the site. I'll download the manual and see if that helps.
And I joined the Yahoo group, so maybe their archives or members can help.
-Joe

 

Gosh I feel stupid. Someone on the eMachines Yahoo group helped me out.
I had checked "Disable in this profile" but I still had "Exists in all profiles" checked. Once I unchecked that, it shut down.

Thanks again for all of the advice and help, especially Dunbar!
I'll be back if I have any more questions/problems

-Joe