Need video card that is AGP and Win7 drivers

[OneDave]

I have 3 computers that I bought through a refurbishment program and use in a (charity) small business. They are older machines that were at least Pentium 4s, upgraded to Win7and 2MB memory. They require the AGP style interface for the video card. The video cards that were installed work fine with Office applications. However, if one tries to run a simple game (like Win 7 solitare), the screen slows to a crawl. In the case of solitare, just moving one playing card can take 8 seconds to show up on the screen.

I was told by the refurbisher that I need to swap out the old video card for one that has Win7 drivers. He didn't have any. Unfortunately, the three stores I shop at do not sell new AGP video cards. I have found some used cards, but I am having trouble identifying which might have Win7 drivers. When I check manufacturer sites by card model, most do not. When I have found mention of Win7 drivers, they ended up being Win7 "compatible" drivers that really run in XP mode (VGA) and don't solve the problem.

I did find 2 cards that had the drivers and dide the trick. I can't find any more of them.

Does anyone have any recommendations for (inexpensive) video cards that have an AGP bus interface and Win7 drivers? My requirement is just to run the Win7 simple games at normal speed.

Thanks,
Dave

[dg1261]

I'm not an expert, but I don't think it's a driver issue. Win7 should have whatever drivers it needs natively. I think the real issue is your old graphics adapter doesn't meet Win7's hardware requirements--particularly DirectX 9 and some minimum pixel pipelines support.

FWIW, I've upgraded a few 8-yr old Dell Dimension 4600 computers with Win7 and new GeForce 6200-based AGP8X graphics cards from newegg. (They were upgraded at different times, so brands varied from EVGA to Jaton to something called Sparkle, with 256 or 512MB ram.) The D4600 came with integrated graphics and an empty AGP4X slot, but the integrated graphics doesn't support Win7 Aero effects. Dropping in an AGP4/8X card enabled Aero, bumped the "Windows Experience" graphics score from 1.0 to 3.6, and none of the cards required anything other than Win7's built-in drivers.

YMMV, but I think all you need to look for is a GeForce 6200 or better chipset, or whatever the equivalent would be from ATI.


Dan

[tonyl]

I too can recommend the 6200, lovely little card and cheap as chips. I'm using it in an XP machine, and the Win7 Upgrade Advisor says it's fine.

[Sara88]

This is a good advice, but I think he can find this model only second hand.

I'm not an expert, but I don't think it's a driver issue. Win7 should have whatever drivers it needs natively. I think the real issue is your old graphics adapter doesn't meet Win7's hardware requirements--particularly DirectX 9 and some minimum pixel pipelines support.

FWIW, I've upgraded a few 8-yr old Dell Dimension 4600 computers with Win7 and new GeForce 6200-based AGP8X graphics cards from newegg. (They were upgraded at different times, so brands varied from EVGA to Jaton to something called Sparkle, with 256 or 512MB ram.) play ms pacman The D4600 came with integrated graphics and an empty AGP4X slot, but the integrated graphics doesn't support Win7 Aero effects. Dropping in an AGP4/8X card enabled Aero, bumped the "Windows Experience" graphics score from 1.0 to 3.6, and none of the cards required anything other than Win7's built-in drivers.

YMMV, but I think all you need to look for is a GeForce 6200 or better chipset, or whatever the equivalent would be from ATI.


Dan

[curiousclive]

can a gforce 6200 AGP8 card from Here. Together with other choices.
That is if OP is still reading this post after all this time.