GeForce 6200 Question

[bruceb]

I have an older Dell Dimension 8200 P4 at 1.8Ghz with 521MB of RDRAM
It now has a GeForce 6200 Video Card and while it is working great, I have
a question about memory.

Does this card have it's own on board Video RAM ?

Does that count as seperate to the computers maximum RAM ?
In this case it is XP PRO with SP3 and the Motherboard can only address 2GB

Would my web browser (firefox 47.0.1) run better on some sites if I have
hardware acceleration turned on ? (letting the video card pickup some of the load)

If that can be done, how do I set the card options ? ?

Thanks

 

[Ketchup]

Yes, it is it's own card. Hardware accel should work, and enabled by ff by default.I also recommend you install a flash addon (such as youtube flash player), as video content should run better on Flash than HTML5 on a machine of that area.

So, are you having issues currently?

 

[bruceb]

Only issue on that machine is some pages like to take long to load (such as latimes crossword) where it insists on ad block being disabled. Page will still load with it enabled, but it takes longer. And playing some games, like jigsaw puzzles, piece movement is not as fast as it should be. I will try enabling hardware accel in Firefox and see what it does. Worst case, I need to turn it back off.

 

[LTC8K6]

Some 6200 cards were "Turbocache" versions, which used system ram.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboCache

 

[Magic Carpet]

Would my web browser (firefox 47.0.1) run better on some sites if I have
hardware acceleration turned on ? (letting the video card pickup some of the load)

Won't work with XP, sadly. You need a newer operating system to make more use of your video card in non-gaming situations (i.e. a different driver model). Your video card is officially reported to work in Windows 7/8, but if you take that route, might as well get a new computer.

Having said that, I had a similar computer (P4 + Geforce 6200) configured with Windows 7, and last I heard it was still working fine for light video watching/browsing. I'd give Windows 10 a go, if I had time, the most efficient Windows yet.

 

[LTC8K6]

The old P4 may have trouble with Win10 though?

 

[bruceb]

The P4 might work with Win 10 but it would need at least 1GB of RAM .. the Dell Dimension 8200 motherboard could only address up to 2GB and it was Samsung RAMBUS Memory that was used .. hard and costly and all memory sticks must be the same make and speed or the pc is not happy. I wonder if using a USB Drive as a RAM Drive would speed things up (I would use it only for applications, like the Page File does) as it should be way faster than using the hard drive.

 

[Magic Carpet]

The old P4 may have trouble with Win10 though?

Actually yes, Windows 8 and up began to require the NX bit and his early Willamette P4 hasn't got it. So, yeah... Windows 7 SP1 is the maximum what he can upgrade to, windows wise. Still, better than Windows XP SP3.

RAMBUS ram... that was a HOOOOT topic, some 15 years ago. How much did you pay for it ?

Bruce, why not use an SSD instead? Just use a PCI expansion card w/ a couple of Sata ports and off you go. I've done it on older P3 systems, just fine. For example, this. There is only one caveat, not every SDD is going to be recognized, but if you have a few, just see what works and what doesn't. I recommend, the Intel 320 SSD 160GB, has worked in my every older system that I power up from time to time (Intel 815 chipset / Nforce 4 and newer) just fine, with or without the pci expansion card.

I wonder if using a USB Drive as a RAM Drive would speed things up (I would use it only for applications, like the Page File does) as it should be way faster than using the hard drive.

It would speed things up some, I've used it. Just get a stick with good 4K read/write performance. But SSD is much a better solution

 

[bruceb]

I did think about that, but the current 120GB Western Digital drive is doing just fine. It still has about 25GB free (but it only runs at 5400RPM) and I do have a brand new IDE 500GB 7200RPM Western Digital drive to swap over to when the old one runs out of room or causes trouble. All I would need to do is pop it in and restore my Ghost Image

 

[Magic Carpet]

Oh, I suppose, you are still using Ghost 2003

Something like this, but you do need to upgrade your OS, though.

Or use eBoostr with your current OS. And I couldn't have mentioned the i-RAM.

Plenty of options

 

[bruceb]

Yes, Ghost 2003 .. works perfectly fine. Not looking to add another program just to manage the Page File .. that I-Ram looks interesting, but not sure if I have free slot or not and it may or may not work with the old Dell mobo .. for now I guess it will stay as is (maybe up the RAMBUS by another 1GB if I can get the right modules reasonably) .. Eventually I will be upgrading to something with an I-7 but that is not in the immediate future. More concerned about how long it will take to reinstall all my programs (most will work on Win 7 or Win 10) a few might not.

 

[Ketchup]

So, if I may ask, what purpose does this Dell actually serve?

 

[bruceb]

General web browsing and other basic apps, like MS Office .. nothing really special, used to have a program to read HU cards, but they are no longer used. But the software could still work to program other types of security access cards (it used a serial interface) Not essential, but nice to have if needed.

 

[SPBHM]

Some 6200 cards were "Turbocache" versions, which used system ram.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboCache

he is probably running the AGP version of the 6200, so no turbo cache.


with 512MB even updated XP will struggle,

windows 10 and 8 might fail to work with a P4 1.8GHz because it most likely lacks NX-bit

also I've tested 10 with 1GB recently and it was basically not usable...

if you add more ram (at least 1GB) I think you can attempt to use windows 7, but more than that will probably require some hacking and be slow.


honestly I think the best experience with this PC will be to keep it on XP but add another 512MB of memory anyway.

but trying to use this old PC for web browsing doesn't really make sense.
we are talking about a PC from 2002 with a graphics card from 2004/5 basically.

 

[bruceb]

The box on my 6200 says 512MB DDR RAM .. as to it's age, it was installed in 2015 when the original nvidia card installed in 2001 finally called it quits.

 

[SPBHM]

The box on my 6200 says 512MB DDR RAM .. as to it's age, it was installed in 2015 when the original nvidia card installed in 2001 finally called it quits.

I mean the geforce 6200 is a model released in 2004/2005, with limited performance and features from that time.

honestly, apart from gaming from that era, I don't think having a 6200 or a geforce 2 from 2001 will change things much on this PC,

 

[Insomniator]

I honestly can't believe that machine is useful for anything anymore. Single core P4, 512 MB of ram and a ~10 year old 5400 RPM HDD.

I'd spend 100 bucks on some refurb c2d machine in the interim before your total upgrade.

 

[bruceb]

It's not the price, it's all the time and effort to get everything (programs and settings) all installed, optioned and everything the way I want it again that takes time. I could get a nice I7 desktop for around $1K or so, maybe less.

 

[Ketchup]

General web browsing and other basic apps, like MS Office .. nothing really special, used to have a program to read HU cards, but they are no longer used. But the software could still work to program other types of security access cards (it used a serial interface) Not essential, but nice to have if needed.

So is this your main computer?

 

[bruceb]

My main desktop. Also have a Toshiba laptop with Win 10 on it

 

[Magic Carpet]

More concerned about how long it will take to reinstall all my programs (most will work on Win 7 or Win 10) a few might not.

I suppose you could run that XP from a virtualized environment until you get everything set up the way you want. Something like that.

I honestly can't believe that machine is useful for anything anymore.

If you run apps from that era, I don't see a problem. I have an older computer with appropriate older apps and it works fine and runs fast. It's software that makes hardware obsolete, not the "time" as we know it.

 

[Ketchup]

My main desktop. Also have a Toshiba laptop with Win 10 on it

Your main issues appear to be Flash, HTML 5, and current browsers. They are all demanding quite a bit more than they did when your computer was current (and HTML 5 didn't even exist yet).

You can get an i3 system with Windows 7 for $187:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883282178&ignorebbr=1

And if you step down to Core 2 era, under $100 (I don't recommend, still slow on things), but you get Windows 7.

There really isn't a good reason to be running a such a slow desktop, receiving no fixes for security holes found in the OS, as a main machine. If time is money, you are losing $$$ on this guy.

 

[bruceb]

I will say that Firefox, likes to take it's sweet time to initially open and also to shut down. Mainly due probably to the amount of addons (about 26 .. could get rid about 3 or 4) I have in it. Also Shockwave when used for some game sites will cause issues at times. Flash and Shockwave really need to die off. It would be much better if I increase the amount of RAM

 

[SPBHM]

if you really want to insist on this PC, add as much ram as you can (I think 1GB is the limit!)

you might also have a little less painful time if you upgrade it to the fastest CPU this MB supports (probably like 2.8GHz p4)

if you don't use a slow antivirus it might be fairly OK for web browsing, judging by how my p4 2.4 runs on win7 with Chrome (without antivirus and auto updates off)

but you seem to underestimate just how much things have improved, even a Core 2 Duo from 2006 is going to be night and day, and the current Celerons are a lot better than the old C2D

 

[bruceb]

I realize all that and sometime in next couple of years, it probably will be replaced with a much better system. Just not ready to do that just yet, as I can use my Toshiba laptop for most things. I do keep office files (excel and word) on the older machine. I would have to check and see if the old Dell Mobo can take a faster processor or not. And as to antivirus I am using Avast Free on my computers.