[Koralatov]

I have no idea what forum to put this in, or even if I'm allowed to ask this here, but I have a PC with integrated graphics (currently set at 64MB I think). It's about two years old, a Dell with a P4 Celeron at 2.7GHz. Unfortunately, the motherboard has no AGP slot, and the only PCI-E is X1, so I don't think it's of any use for a graphics card. I've seen a PCI GeForce 6200 that I'm thinking of putting in my PC. However, I'm not sure if there would be any performance benefit whatsoever.

I don't really know a whole hell of a lot about graphics cards, so I'm wondering if anyone can answer my question. Will the graphics card give me any appreciable performance boost, or will the fact that it's on a PCI bus prevent it from giving me any extra performance? Would I be wasting my money?

[Scarpa]

It will give you a performance boost over the integrated graphics, for sure. The catch is that you will only see it when using graphics intensive applications(ie, gaming), you won't notice an overall boost in performance.

[Chuckit]

It will also let you have more memory for your actual day-to-day tasks. (Also, gaming is not the only example of a graphics-intensive application, but whatever.)

[reader50]

Assuming your PCI slots are basic 32-bit / 33 MHz, the PCIe 1x slot will have almost twice the bandwidth (250 MB/x vs 133 MB/s). You could get a cheapie PCIe card fairly easily, probably with better specs than a PCI version.

As to your question, a discrete graphics card will almost always be better than integrated graphics. The only exceptions would be something like a very recent nForce integrated solution vs a very old graphics card.

[mduell]

Are you sure you have a PCIe x1 slot? It seems strange that you would have an x1 slot and not an x16 slot, but it's possible.
Also, do you have a full size mini tower or one of the slimline towers? If you don't know, which model Dell do you have? (complete model number... e.g. 4300 and 4300C mean different things)

Originally Posted by reader50 

As to your question, a discrete graphics card will almost always be better than integrated graphics. The only exceptions would be something like a very recent nForce integrated solution vs a very old graphics card.

Even GMA950 (~2 year old low-end integrated graphics) has some advantages over a Radeon 9200 (which was in the iBook and Mac mini 2 years ago) in terms of feature support (so the former gave you Core Image/Video, while the latter did not).

[Koralatov]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

It will also let you have more memory for your actual day-to-day tasks. (Also, gaming is not the only example of a graphics-intensive application, but whatever.)

I occasionally use Photoshop and InDesign, which I consider graphics intensive tasks, so any boost to overall performance would be much appreciated.

Originally Posted by mduell 

Are you sure you have a PCIe x1 slot? It seems strange that you would have an x1 slot and not an x16 slot, but it's possible.
Also, do you have a full size mini tower or one of the slimline towers? If you don't know, which model Dell do you have? (complete model number... e.g. 4300 and 4300C mean different things)

It's a Dell Dimension 3100. I know it's a PCIe x1 slot because I've nosed around inside the case (surprisingly tidy and well laid-out) and saw PCI slots, and a really small PCIe slot. Some googling revealed that Dell had kindly not bothered to include an x16 slot. Thanks, Dell. My PC is this exact model, albeit I have 1GB of RAM (2 × 512MB). I'm basically left with the option of a PCI graphics card, or attempting to find a PCIe x1 graphics card, which doesn't seem easy. A google search turned up mention of the Galaxy GeForce 7300GT as having a PCIe x1 option, but I couldn't find it on sale anywhere. And I also don't want to spend a whole heap of cash on something because, ultimately, the PC won't be around forever, and once it dies, I likely won't be buying another.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Koralatov 

I occasionally use Photoshop and InDesign, which I consider graphics intensive tasks, so any boost to overall performance would be much appreciated.

And make absolutely no use of the GPU... upgrading the graphics card in Windows is pretty much only going to help in games (unless you use one of the few pieces of video editing software or similar that uses directx).

Originally Posted by Koralatov 

It's a Dell Dimension 3100. I know it's a PCIe x1 slot because I've nosed around inside the case (surprisingly tidy and well laid-out) and saw PCI slots, and a really small PCIe slot. Some googling revealed that Dell had kindly not bothered to include an x16 slot. Thanks, Dell. My PC is this exact model, albeit I have 1GB of RAM (2 × 512MB). I'm basically left with the option of a PCI graphics card, or attempting to find a PCIe x1 graphics card, which doesn't seem easy. A google search turned up mention of the Galaxy GeForce 7300GT as having a PCIe x1 option, but I couldn't find it on sale anywhere. And I also don't want to spend a whole heap of cash on something because, ultimately, the PC won't be around forever, and once it dies, I likely won't be buying another.

There's this PCIe X1550, which isn't a terrible card, but the rear panel is designed for slim PCs, so it would need some dremeling.
Here's a PCIe X1300 that will work, but X1300 isn't much better than GMA950.
This PCI X1550 is probably your best option; PCI is slower than PCIe, but it should still be faster than the X1300 and won't require the hacking the slim X1550 would need.

[Koralatov]

Originally Posted by mduell 

And make absolutely no use of the GPU... upgrading the graphics card in Windows is pretty much only going to help in games (unless you use one of the few pieces of video editing software or similar that uses directx).

My apologies; I assumed, obviously incorrectly, that they made use of the GPU.

Thanks for the advice regarding the PCIe graphics cards.