Video Card question

Dvl-Jigen · Post by **Dvl-Jigen** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 6:41 pm

I'm going to be buying a 256MB video card in the next few weeks, & I'm wondering, if i get a PCI video card, can I use it to add on to my existing 128MB AGP card?

The card I have now, is an ATI RAdeon 9600SE, & the one I'm thinking of getting is an ATI RADEON 9550

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 7:03 pm

Yes, but PCI video cards are crap. What do you need 2 vidcards for? Are you running 3 or more monitors?

Dvl-Jigen · Post by **Dvl-Jigen** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 3:03 am

Actually, I just want more video ram, & a total of 384MB sounds nice

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 7:08 am

Unless you are playing 3D games (Quake 4, Half-Life 2, etc.) or running your video card at VERY high resolutions you don't need more than 128MB of video memory. In fact, most people can probably live with 64MB of video memory. Adding another video card is not like adding another stick of RAM in your computer. 128MB + 256 MB does not = 384MB. The ONLY reason to add another video card for most systems is to be able to connect and run more than 2 monitors at once since a single video card nowadays can support 2 monitors by itself. Some graphics and video editors like to have multiple monitors since you can use on to show your project and move toobars, menus, etc. onto another screen. Also, you can open mutiple programs at once and have each program run at full screen, like Premiere on one screen and Photoshop on a second screen.

There is ONE exception to this and the benefit currently is ONLY for certain applications - 3D video games. What I'm referring to is nVidia's SLI or ATI's CrossFire technologies. Using special motherboards and matched (or special, in ATI's case) videocards, you can play games at higher resolutions and at faster framerates than if you only had a single card. BUT, this will do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for standard applications like web browsing, photo editing, word processing, etc.

I would recommend that if you are looking to improve your computer's performance, either you use the money you have and get more RAM (aka. system memory, SDRAM, DDR RAM, DDR2 RAM, etc.), especially if you only have 512MB or less now, OR buy the videocard with more video RAM but get an AGP version. (Just re-reading your original post and doing a search on the web, there is NO Radeon 9550 256MB in a PCI configuration, only an AGP version. There IS a Radeon 9250 256MB PCI version which, overall is a WORSE card than your existing Radeon 9600SE.)

So, to answer your original question,

Dvl-Jigen wrote:I'm wondering, if i get a PCI video card, can I use it to add on to my existing 128MB AGP card?

NO.