Graphic card selection

LinuxLewis · Sep 6, 2011, 02:06 PM

Hi everyone
I needed some help with guidance on choosing my graphics card.

I have an Acer Inspire X3810 with pentium dual core processor E5200 @ 2.5GHz

It requires a low profile graphics card

The available slot is at the top so its height cannot be doubled (with regards to heatsink cooling fins overextended) - so fan cooled optimal me thinks

I require a graphics card just to allow multitasking - it lags on occasion (there are no viruses as such - full formatting done very recently)

So far the Nvidia 210 512Mb DDR2 is in my head but unsure about compatibility

Ideally someone who has this computer already who can guide me

Thank you for your time dudes

I have just joined and am learning leaps and bounds with hardware so I am not a complete noob!

Takaharu · Sep 6, 2011, 03:27 PM

If the 210 is a low-level graphics card then it should be fine in your system.
I'd recommend looking at alternatives to the graphics card, however, as a more powerful graphics card isn't likely to speed up your system when multi-tasking, unless it's the display of the applications that is taking its time.

Could you provide more information about your computer like how much RAM you have and what speed it's running at, along with details of your harddrive (including space used) and your current graphics card?
The Acer Inspire X3810 is customisable so there's no set specification to look up.

steves6403 · Sep 6, 2011, 03:34 PM

i had a look at system layout and theres really not alot of room.

My advice would to take the puter to a shop and see what will fit.

If you were feeling crazy and the warranty has run out i,d charge puter case but only if you were feelin crazy.

You could then have a crazy vid card

IvanV · Sep 6, 2011, 03:56 PM

Hi LinuxLewis!

I have to say I'm with Takaharu, if the system lags only occasionally while multitasking, maybe you'd gain more if you installed more RAM? You should be able to notice the system is accessing the hard drive at those times if that is the case. Graphics card shouldn't cause any lag unless there is a driver problem or you're using it for Folding@home or something like that.

Judas · Sep 6, 2011, 04:31 PM

i swear i just had that model in my shop a few months ago for a video card.

it was a pci-ex slot low profile.. and yeah... leaves a lot to be desired for "working room"

but either way.. i used a ATI Radeon 6570 1GB DDR3 Express card.... unscrewed the standard plate and took it off and removed the VGA out on it.... slapped the low profile plate on it and slapped it into the machine... mine had a small fan and heatsink...

but it was the best i could find and was about $125 give or take...

LinuxLewis · Sep 6, 2011, 11:57 PM

wow guys - i feel chuffed for the quick responses. currently 2gb of RAM
I have just ordered 2GB of RAM so I will see how it goes. I know u guys may feel irritated that i did not do this first but i felt a RAM would not really do much as i checked with task mamager which says i am only using 60-70% at any one time - but i will to see how it fares.

@steves6403 - I saw the hard drive was back to back with optical drive and lying directly ontop of the motherboard.the hard drive is screwed on the outer chassis of the optical drive so I removed the optical drive and placed two usb fans in there for now. The optical drive was removed and put to one side for now. I have been told by a friend that small case motherboards are designed to withstand the extra temperature but thats just adds to wear and tear so why not!
moving to a bigger chassis for me is too much of a project - but is that possible? any decent cage u would recommend - ideally second hand from ebay!

LinuxLewis · Sep 6, 2011, 11:58 PM

@Judas - lol the working room made me laugh. I brought this pc in a rush to replace a crashed dell inspiron 2200 for exam revision. And now i sit and stare into the abyss of the computer - the SATA wires are contorted and seem about to fray out which scares me!

LinuxLewis · Sep 7, 2011, 12:11 AM

pentium dual core processor E5200 @ 2.5GHz
2GB of RAM
GPU Intel (R) G45/G43 Express Chipset
southbridge Intel 82801JR (ICH10R)
BIOS AMI P01-A3
106.5GB used in 297GB (320GB hard drive) - three partitions made, one for win 7, second for program installations and third partition for personal

Judas · Sep 7, 2011, 12:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LinuxLewis

wow guys - i feel chuffed for the quick responses. currently 2gb of RAM
I have just ordered 2 lots of 2GB of RAM so I will slap them in and see how it goes. I know u guys may feel irritated that i did not do this first but i felt a RAM would not really do much as i checked with task mamager which says i am only using 60-70% at any one time - but i will to see how it fares.

Actually i find a machine that runs smoothly with no extra hardrive thrashing due to insufficent ram is about 25-35% at any one time (excluding the heavier loads).... windows starts to tighten it's belt and deffer a lot of the load to swap file at the 60-80% usage mark as it is always trying to prep for a point in time that you start to load something that may need it. Not to mention that in order to keep things in ram as much as possible.. you don't know exactly what it is swapping to the hardrive or completely unloading in order to keep it within it's typical opperating quota persay.

Not saying 2gb of ram isn't good enough.. but i'll guarantee that provided with a motherboard capable of dual channel and running even windows xp or and definitely newer.... 4gb of ram does provide a pretty siginificant improvement for even the simpliest of office tasks or work enviroments.

Ram is still king when it comes to the cheapest upgrades that make the biggest improvement.

I mean i've a Pentium 2 266mhz machine here running windows 7 with 1536mb of ram (yay for old intel chipsets that sometimes/somehow managed to read double sided 512MB SD-RAM, a board that wasn't even testing 256 let alone 128mb SD ram at the time really aside from suggesting that 384mb was the max)...

I degress though....

Quote:

@steves6403 - I saw the hard drive was back to back with optical drive and lying directly ontop of the motherboard.the hard drive is screwed on the outer chassis of the optical drive so I removed the optical drive and placed two usb fans in there for now. The optical drive was removed and put to one side for now. I have been told by a friend that small case motherboards are designed to withstand the extra temperature but thats just adds to wear and tear so why not!
moving to a bigger chassis for me is too much of a project - but is that possible? any decent cage u would recommend - ideally second hand from ebay!

I have never been a fan of the USB fans.... i played with them and saw they really like to ride the edge of hte USB overload zone on draw.. actually i've had a few cases where those fans killed the USB controller rendering those usb ports totally useless... be careful is all i'm saying.... the only fans i would suggest using are those that using a 3 or 4 pin connnector attached to the motherboard OR the power supply itself. (even if you have to use an adapter)

As for the heat.... it's a bit of a joke... I see these machines built in confined tight spaces and all crammed into a small box and they run bloody hot usually. Although the manufacturer "says" it's within normal operating temperature.... it's damn hot and prone to failure... i've seen my fair share of these machines almost bursting into flames.. and them packing up full of dust/lint/fluff .. enough to cause litteral flames. Find another case may be of good interest to you... just make sure the excisting motherboard uses a standard mount layout..... HP and Dell quite often DO NOT resulting in it being a total pain in the ass to move from their hunk of crap cases to something decent even if it's cheap still.

Can't really recommend anything.. but recently i jerry rigged a system using one of the cheapest cooler master cases i could find without comprimsing to much.... Elite 310 was a good deal.

LinuxLewis · Sep 7, 2011, 12:58 AM

qudos for the well informed reply
i violated the 12 month warranty as soon as 7 months was up to clean up the dust on the cpu fan - there was alot. I do spot checks now and then to clean up.
I had already ordered a two unit cooling fan designed to be mounted on hard drive and powered via motherboard
The usb fan thing was temporary but i would probably would have relocated them elsewhere within the dungeon. I will now hesitate to use them.

The first matched pair go in slot 1 and 3, the second pair uses slots 2 and
4. The slot closest to the CPU is usually slot 1 and slot 3 will have the
same color as slot 1. Slots 2 and 4 will be the other color. ----------is this correct?

Thanks guys for the support. I really do appreciate this

steves6403 · Sep 7, 2011, 11:06 AM

@steves6403 - I saw the hard drive was back to back with optical drive and lying directly ontop of the motherboard.the hard drive is screwed on the outer chassis of the optical drive so I removed the optical drive and placed two usb fans in there for now. The optical drive was removed and put to one side for now. I have been told by a friend that small case motherboards are designed to withstand the extra temperature but thats just adds to wear and tear so why not!
moving to a bigger chassis for me is too much of a project - but is that possible? any decent cage u would recommend - ideally second hand from ebay![/QUOTE]

anything would do, ive 1 you could have if you lived in lillydale australia

LinuxLewis · Sep 7, 2011, 01:52 PM

@steve6403 well buddy i appreciate the offer but the work involved would not be worth it. I have seen the Antec Lanboy Air and will ultimately focus on acquiring that rig to set up my desired components. For now I will stick to the exisiting chassis and play around with it. But hey - I feel the love!

Whats the maximum height of the graphics card I can use?

LinuxLewis · Sep 7, 2011, 06:49 PM

I opened my computer up once more and identified the northbridge processor - very hot to touch. I checked the temp via BIOS and I got 50 degrees celsius (I have read 30-35 is good).
I placed a usb fan (temporary check) and immediately the temp started dropping down to 30 degrees celsius!

LinuxLewis · Sep 8, 2011, 04:25 AM

512MB NVIDIA GEFORCE 210 HDMI LOW PROFILE GRAPHICS CARD

can someone please agree that this is compatible for my computer. This will hopefully conclude the thread!

Judas · Sep 8, 2011, 04:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LinuxLewis

The first matched pair go in slot 1 and 3, the second pair uses slots 2 and
4. The slot closest to the CPU is usually slot 1 and slot 3 will have the
same color as slot 1. Slots 2 and 4 will be the other color. ----------is this correct?

Thanks guys for the support. I really do appreciate this

yes for the ram.... typically 1 and 3 are seperate channels.. filling them will give you dual channel memory...

2 and 4 are for extra ram... filling them as well with same sized ram will give dual channel.

i've only seen a few motherboard where 1 and 2 were to be filled to obtain dual channel ... i think they were on a few amd boards....

but yes general rule of thumb

slot 1 ~> 1gb
slot 2 ~> 512mb
slot 3 ~> 1gb
slot 4 ~> 512mb

will give you 3GB in dual channel mode.

Sep 6, 2011, 02:06 PM	#1
LinuxLewis Linux Lewis Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Coevntry, UK Posts: 10 Rep Power: 0	Graphic card selection Hi everyone I needed some help with guidance on choosing my graphics card. I have an Acer Inspire X3810 with pentium dual core processor E5200 @ 2.5GHz It requires a low profile graphics card The available slot is at the top so its height cannot be doubled (with regards to heatsink cooling fins overextended) - so fan cooled optimal me thinks I require a graphics card just to allow multitasking - it lags on occasion (there are no viruses as such - full formatting done very recently) So far the Nvidia 210 512Mb DDR2 is in my head but unsure about compatibility Ideally someone who has this computer already who can guide me Thank you for your time dudes I have just joined and am learning leaps and bounds with hardware so I am not a complete noob!

Sep 6, 2011, 03:27 PM	#2
Takaharu I can fart in 7 languages Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: England, UK Posts: 1,850 Rep Power: 113 System Specs	Re: Graphic card selection If the 210 is a low-level graphics card then it should be fine in your system. I'd recommend looking at alternatives to the graphics card, however, as a more powerful graphics card isn't likely to speed up your system when multi-tasking, unless it's the display of the applications that is taking its time. Could you provide more information about your computer like how much RAM you have and what speed it's running at, along with details of your harddrive (including space used) and your current graphics card? The Acer Inspire X3810 is customisable so there's no set specification to look up. __________________ I don't get paid to know the answer, therefore I'm far more likely to give you a straight and honest answer. Mods Rig, Box Mods Rig, Folding details

Sep 6, 2011, 03:34 PM	#3
steves6403 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: lilydale australia Posts: 249 Rep Power: 27 System Specs	Re: Graphic card selection i had a look at system layout and theres really not alot of room. My advice would to take the puter to a shop and see what will fit. If you were feeling crazy and the warranty has run out i,d charge puter case but only if you were feelin crazy. You could then have a crazy vid card

Sep 6, 2011, 03:56 PM	#4
IvanV HH Assassin Guild Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 5,914 Rep Power: 333 System Specs	Re: Graphic card selection Hi LinuxLewis! I have to say I'm with Takaharu, if the system lags only occasionally while multitasking, maybe you'd gain more if you installed more RAM? You should be able to notice the system is accessing the hard drive at those times if that is the case. Graphics card shouldn't cause any lag unless there is a driver problem or you're using it for Folding@home or something like that. __________________ If anyone has Portal 2 and hasn't played the co-op and wants to do me a favour, let me know (PM me or whatever). Last edited by IvanV; Sep 6, 2011 at 04:10 PM.

Sep 6, 2011, 11:57 PM	Thread Starter #6
LinuxLewis Linux Lewis Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Coevntry, UK Posts: 10 Rep Power: 0	Re: Graphic card selection wow guys - i feel chuffed for the quick responses. currently 2gb of RAM I have just ordered 2GB of RAM so I will see how it goes. I know u guys may feel irritated that i did not do this first but i felt a RAM would not really do much as i checked with task mamager which says i am only using 60-70% at any one time - but i will to see how it fares. @steves6403 - I saw the hard drive was back to back with optical drive and lying directly ontop of the motherboard.the hard drive is screwed on the outer chassis of the optical drive so I removed the optical drive and placed two usb fans in there for now. The optical drive was removed and put to one side for now. I have been told by a friend that small case motherboards are designed to withstand the extra temperature but thats just adds to wear and tear so why not! moving to a bigger chassis for me is too much of a project - but is that possible? any decent cage u would recommend - ideally second hand from ebay! Last edited by LinuxLewis; Sep 7, 2011 at 02:41 AM. Reason: wrong info

Sep 6, 2011, 11:58 PM	Thread Starter #7
LinuxLewis Linux Lewis Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Coevntry, UK Posts: 10 Rep Power: 0	Re: Graphic card selection @Judas - lol the working room made me laugh. I brought this pc in a rush to replace a crashed dell inspiron 2200 for exam revision. And now i sit and stare into the abyss of the computer - the SATA wires are contorted and seem about to fray out which scares me!

Sep 7, 2011, 12:11 AM	Thread Starter #8
LinuxLewis Linux Lewis Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Coevntry, UK Posts: 10 Rep Power: 0	Re: Graphic card selection pentium dual core processor E5200 @ 2.5GHz 2GB of RAM GPU Intel (R) G45/G43 Express Chipset southbridge Intel 82801JR (ICH10R) BIOS AMI P01-A3 106.5GB used in 297GB (320GB hard drive) - three partitions made, one for win 7, second for program installations and third partition for personal Last edited by LinuxLewis; Sep 7, 2011 at 12:15 AM. Reason: wrong word

Sep 7, 2011, 12:58 AM	Thread Starter #10
LinuxLewis Linux Lewis Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Coevntry, UK Posts: 10 Rep Power: 0	Re: Graphic card selection qudos for the well informed reply i violated the 12 month warranty as soon as 7 months was up to clean up the dust on the cpu fan - there was alot. I do spot checks now and then to clean up. I had already ordered a two unit cooling fan designed to be mounted on hard drive and powered via motherboard The usb fan thing was temporary but i would probably would have relocated them elsewhere within the dungeon. I will now hesitate to use them. The first matched pair go in slot 1 and 3, the second pair uses slots 2 and 4. The slot closest to the CPU is usually slot 1 and slot 3 will have the same color as slot 1. Slots 2 and 4 will be the other color. ----------is this correct? Thanks guys for the support. I really do appreciate this Last edited by LinuxLewis; Sep 7, 2011 at 02:41 AM.

Sep 7, 2011, 11:06 AM	#11
steves6403 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: lilydale australia Posts: 249 Rep Power: 27 System Specs	Re: Graphic card selection @steves6403 - I saw the hard drive was back to back with optical drive and lying directly ontop of the motherboard.the hard drive is screwed on the outer chassis of the optical drive so I removed the optical drive and placed two usb fans in there for now. The optical drive was removed and put to one side for now. I have been told by a friend that small case motherboards are designed to withstand the extra temperature but thats just adds to wear and tear so why not! moving to a bigger chassis for me is too much of a project - but is that possible? any decent cage u would recommend - ideally second hand from ebay![/QUOTE] anything would do, ive 1 you could have if you lived in lillydale australia

Sep 7, 2011, 01:52 PM	Thread Starter #12
LinuxLewis Linux Lewis Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Coevntry, UK Posts: 10 Rep Power: 0	Re: Graphic card selection @steve6403 well buddy i appreciate the offer but the work involved would not be worth it. I have seen the Antec Lanboy Air and will ultimately focus on acquiring that rig to set up my desired components. For now I will stick to the exisiting chassis and play around with it. But hey - I feel the love! Whats the maximum height of the graphics card I can use? Last edited by LinuxLewis; Sep 7, 2011 at 01:53 PM. Reason: more info added

Sep 7, 2011, 06:49 PM	Thread Starter #13
LinuxLewis Linux Lewis Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Coevntry, UK Posts: 10 Rep Power: 0	Re: Graphic card selection I opened my computer up once more and identified the northbridge processor - very hot to touch. I checked the temp via BIOS and I got 50 degrees celsius (I have read 30-35 is good). I placed a usb fan (temporary check) and immediately the temp started dropping down to 30 degrees celsius! Last edited by LinuxLewis; Sep 8, 2011 at 04:16 AM. Reason: some info obsolete

Sep 8, 2011, 04:25 AM	Thread Starter #14
LinuxLewis Linux Lewis Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Coevntry, UK Posts: 10 Rep Power: 0	Re: Graphic card selection 512MB NVIDIA GEFORCE 210 HDMI LOW PROFILE GRAPHICS CARD can someone please agree that this is compatible for my computer. This will hopefully conclude the thread!