Old Computer Question/s

Ratmagiclady · 07-19-2011, 08:36 PM

Staff note: This post may contain affiliate links, which means Pentax Forums may earn a small commission if a visitor clicks through and makes a purchase. If you would like to support the forum directly, you may also make a donation here.

Hey, everyone, I thought I'd tap some expertise, here: I've been lucky enough to have been offered a newer computer that ought keep my photo pursuits alive, despite some, ah, some more downgraded life-expectations, shall we say.

Doesn't seem too bad at all,: an older Pentium 4 XP machine, it's a small desktop with like 2ghz and I can get enough RAM in there to run a photo editor, but it maxes out at like 2 gigs of DDR. Limited upgrade potential, but it ought to be able to do the work... A question is if it'd be worth looking for a deal on a separate video card, (over the basic built-in) either to speed the system up or otherwise have some significant benefit. I'm pretty determined to keep hold of my nice budget IPS monitor, and it *seems* these machines are too old to benefit from any DVI-D or HDMI type outputs, (Am I correct, here?) but I can use analog.

Anyway, there might be more later, but I was just wondering if I should bother looking for such cards or any general suggestions. There's a place nearby that might have some parts for these types of things.

cyclone3d · 07-19-2011, 09:20 PM

I probably have some stuff that will work with it that I can send you for the price of shipping.

magkelly · 07-19-2011, 09:45 PM

I would grab an older PCI video card, yes, and also up that ram to the 2GB. You'll probably need an older version of Photoshop if you are going to go there too. The newer versions past say CS1 probably will need too much memory and a better video card than you can put in there. Depends upon what you're running really....

selar · 07-19-2011, 09:50 PM

Its a very good idea getting a dedicated graphics card with lots of memory onboard the graphics card for photoediting software.

What kind of graphics card you can put into your system will depend on what kind of connector is available for a graphics card on your mainboard. With a Pentium 4, i'd hazard a guess and say you would have a AGP connector, which will limit the choice of card that you can install, as none of the new ones will fit in an AGP connector, so you are probably looking at second hand or new old stock.
Commonly, a gaming graphics card would give you the best performance in a photo editing application, as they may have more than one GPU, and more onboard memory. However a gaming graphics card would also produce a lot of heat and consume more power, so you need to ensure your computer power supply can handle the extra load, as well as provide enough air flow to cool the card.

shooz · 07-19-2011, 09:58 PM

A video card with onboard RAM will help, as the one you have now uses system RAM.
Freeing that up with a video card will speed up almost anything that uses system RAM
Do make sure there is a slot for it though.
You don't need a fancy one, you're not plating video games.
Get almost any ATI or NVidia with a gig or so of RAM, as cheap as you can find.
Yes, it will help, even without more system RAM.
I never had more than 2 gig until LR3 choked on it.

PS. You may be able to find one cheap with HDMI output, although getting sound out might be a problem with an older machine.

reeftool · 07-19-2011, 10:06 PM

You can probably find a video card for it with a DVI output as long as the motherboard has an AGP slot. I have a similar machine and it still get some use but I built a new tower last winter and am now running Win 7 with an AMD X3 and it is incredibly faster so the old Pentium is now just used for backups. Just to give you a idea of what to expect. I have 1.5 gig of memory. It was originally 512 mb and I added a 1 gig card. Go with 2 gig for best results. The onboard Intel graphics has a 50% chance of crashing if I try to run Adobe Premeire Elements 4. Elements 6 runs ok but a little slow. Lightroom 3 will not run at all. Transcoding about 15 minutes of video using Windows Movie Maker from my camcorder will take about the same time as a shower and whipping up some dinner.

selar · 07-19-2011, 10:59 PM

Here's a listing of all the video cards tested with Adobe CS5:

Nvidia GeForce
7000, 8000, 9000, 100, 200, 400 series

Nvidia Quadro FX
x500, x700, x800, FX370, FX380, FX580 series, Quadro CX cards
(The x represents the initial version number of the card. For example, x500 represents all card lines that end in 500, including the 4500, the 3500, and the 1500 series.)

Nvidia Quadro
600, 2000, 6000, 4000 (Mac).

ATI Radeon
2000, 3000, 4000, 5000 series

Note: ATI X 1000 series cards are no longer being tested.

ATI FireGL
FireGL (R600 family GPUs x6xx series): V3600, V5600, V7600, V7700, V8600, V8650
FirePro (R700 family GPUs X7xx series): V3700, V3750, V5700, V7750, V8700, V8750

ATI FirePro
FirePro (R800 family GPUs x8xx series): V3800, V3850, V5800, V7800, V8800, V9800

Intel
Intel HD Graphics
Intel GMA 4-Series Chipset
Intel HD Graphics Family
Intel HD Graphics P3000

Macintosh
MacBook Air Intel GMA X3100

Source: Tested video cards | Photoshop CS5

Parallax · 07-20-2011, 08:11 AM

Originally posted by magkelly

I would grab an older PCI video card, yes, and also up that ram to the 2GB. You'll probably need an older version of Photoshop if you are going to go there too. The newer versions past say CS1 probably will need too much memory and a better video card than you can put in there. Depends upon what you're running really....

I have a 5 year old XP machine with only 2 GB ram and it CS4 fine; Lightroom is another story, though.

Originally posted by shooz

I never had more than 2 gig until LR3 choked on it.

I have always suspected the Lightroom issue is either video card related, or an incompatability with XP Media Center. It actually runs better on my netbook.

Steinback · 07-20-2011, 08:24 AM

If you can post full specs we can give you a better idea of upgrade potential. The motherboard model, processor, power supply output, and current RAM specs will give some idea of what can be or is worth upgrading. Picking up a half decent but obsolete AGP graphics card for $5 on Craigslist shouldn't be out of the question.

I'm still running a heavily modified Socket 478 P4 with some components dating back to 2003.

Ratmagiclady · 07-20-2011, 12:26 PM

*reading all these replies.*

Spectacular, everyone. (And I might take you up on that, Cyclone, if you think you have helpful things)

Fortunately, in this case, my editing program is PSP Pro Photo X2 Ultimate.. (Which sounds like an overblown razor commercial, but doesn't demand too much in the way of system performance. I know it runs slowly at times on 2gigs of RAM, (even a more modern kind) from seeing the difference when we upgraded this machine (the one I won't have access to) to four. )

But I'm pretty confident it'll work (key hurdle:will it work

and if I can put in a video card to take up some of that RAM helpfully, that's great news.

For those who've helped this analog gal with computereyness before, I expect to retain my spiffy new budget IPS monitor (which can run on all manner of inputs) and my good backup drive, (It'll have to become the primary photo storage, but I think I can have my sweetie hang onto some backups and I have a cheapie external drive that I don't consider rock-solid but works and ain't nothing.

)

Basically, I should have everything I was going to make a real desktop around, it's just that'll likely have to wait till someone starts buying something, and for that, I need something that works. (Story of my life, every time I near0complete an output chain... Monkeywrench.

The specs are it's a proprietary 'small form factor' PC, runs on XP and DDR RAM and I believe it's called a Compaq Evo d51s, ...ah, wait, here's what I have from email, apart from what I found out on the other machine, which is presently crashing.

P4 2 GHz machine with
30 GB hard drive, CD(DVD?)/RW and 3.5" floppy drives.
Compaq EVO D51s "small form factor".
It has just one internal HD bay and only two available PCI slots.
Video, sound, NIC, 4 USB and all other I/O ports are built-in.
Current RAM is 1 GB and can be upgraded to 2GB maximum.

Anyway, my general assessment is it ought to work: I ought to be able to put a small-sized video card (This machine can't take a double-slot or very long one, but otherwise ought to work if all else is compatible, and I may need to put in a wireless card in case where I end up staying while my sweetie's off in some remote outpost isn't amenable to running like a mile of Ethernet cord or anything, which has been just part of the furniture here a long time.

) Assuming the existing gig of RAM is in the form of one 1-gig card, it's a matter of thirty bucks to max that out and I can swing that.

jolepp · 07-20-2011, 02:47 PM

A 2 GHz CPU w. 2 G or RAM and Windows XP sounds perfectly adequate. One tip for teasing a snappier overall operation out of older hardware would be reinstalling XP; the exact cause of "Windows rot" (declining performance with time/use) is unclear, but in my experience it is a real issue. With 2 G of RAM newer versions of Windows are a questionable proposition.

Whether a new graphics card significantly helps performance would depend on the used software being able to use its processing power. It might be worthwhile to get one just for the dedicated display memory (in effect smuggling in some more RAM despite the 2 G limit

) and/or being able to hook up your monitor via DVI. With AGP cards it is worth keeping in mind that all cards do not fit all motherboards (see: Accelerated Graphics Port - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

**boriscleto** · 07-20-2011, 03:02 PM

You could also turn off all the eye candy in XP. That might make it a bit "snappier". Given that it is a small form factor PC the 1GB is probably soldered to the MB and it has 1 RAM slot. I had a SFF HP and that's how it was set up.

Ratmagiclady · 07-20-2011, 03:17 PM

Originally posted by boriscleto

You could also turn off all the eye candy in XP. That might make it a bit "snappier". Given that it is a small form factor PC the 1GB is probably soldered to the MB and it has 1 RAM slot. I had a SFF HP and that's how it was set up.

Actually, I'm informed that the 1GB comes in the form of two 512K cards, so it's just buying twice rather than once if that's what I've got to work with and all. So I dunno, it takes two one-gig cards of an old type to make out... It's a constraint, but what can you do. That's why I was talking about buolding a full-sized monster in the first place. What is is what is.

JeffJS · 07-20-2011, 04:20 PM

RML, Before Buying more memory for your machine, Check with HP and make sure you can actually USE it. I have an HP desktop that, the motherboard will accept 2Gb. However, somehow in the manufacturing of the total machine, they've fixed it so it will only support 1Gb. One can physically install 2Gb but it will only run 1. Also, on my machine, some of the outputs (power) have been removed or disabled from the motherboard.

I learned this all the hard way and would hate to see anyone else learn the same lesson. You should be able to go to the HP website, punch in the serial number or model number of your computer and get all the specs and upgrade info you need.

As you've presumed, the best way to speed your machine is to get a video card with on board memory. That way you are not giving up 20-30 percent of your total RAM for video memory.

cyclone3d · 07-20-2011, 06:38 PM

Does it look like the picture in this link?

Compaq EVO D51S Pentium 4 2.4GHz 256MB 40GB CD FDD XP Professional Small Form Factor - B Compaq EVO D51S

If so, I have a P4 2.4Ghz chip you can have as well as either a 40GB or 80GB hard drive if it hasn't already been upgraded in the past.

Here is a BIN on Ebay for a 2GB set of RAM that should work for that system... and for only ~$17 shipped.
2GB KIT 2X1GB PC3200 DDR 400MHZ LOW DENSITY 64X8 184PIN | eBay

If it has a regulatr AGP slot.. not low profile, I should have a lower end video card I could send you as well... it would be better than the onboard.

07-19-2011, 08:36 PM	#1
Ratmagiclady Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: GA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 13,563	Old Computer Question/s Staff note: This post may contain affiliate links, which means Pentax Forums may earn a small commission if a visitor clicks through and makes a purchase. If you would like to support the forum directly, you may also make a donation here. Hey, everyone, I thought I'd tap some expertise, here: I've been lucky enough to have been offered a newer computer that ought keep my photo pursuits alive, despite some, ah, some more downgraded life-expectations, shall we say. Doesn't seem too bad at all,: an older Pentium 4 XP machine, it's a small desktop with like 2ghz and I can get enough RAM in there to run a photo editor, but it maxes out at like 2 gigs of DDR. Limited upgrade potential, but it ought to be able to do the work... A question is if it'd be worth looking for a deal on a separate video card, (over the basic built-in) either to speed the system up or otherwise have some significant benefit. I'm pretty determined to keep hold of my nice budget IPS monitor, and it seems these machines are too old to benefit from any DVI-D or HDMI type outputs, (Am I correct, here?) but I can use analog. Anyway, there might be more later, but I was just wondering if I should bother looking for such cards or any general suggestions. There's a place nearby that might have some parts for these types of things.

07-19-2011, 09:58 PM	#5
shooz Site Supporter Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Detroit Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 3,491	A video card with onboard RAM will help, as the one you have now uses system RAM. Freeing that up with a video card will speed up almost anything that uses system RAM Do make sure there is a slot for it though. You don't need a fancy one, you're not plating video games. Get almost any ATI or NVidia with a gig or so of RAM, as cheap as you can find. Yes, it will help, even without more system RAM. I never had more than 2 gig until LR3 choked on it. PS. You may be able to find one cheap with HDMI output, although getting sound out might be a problem with an older machine. Last edited by shooz; 07-19-2011 at 10:07 PM.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
simple question about computer in sleep mode	barondla	Digital Processing, Software, and Printing	9	02-12-2010 10:23 PM
Old Computer Help	Lowell Goudge	General Talk	11	01-15-2010 06:16 AM
K2000 and computer together	veegish	Photographic Technique	1	10-22-2009 09:46 AM
Computer question	jnoelle	Pentax DSLR Discussion	12	07-18-2008 02:35 PM
memory cards, instruction book, and computer question	barondla	Pentax DSLR Discussion	14	02-14-2007 02:23 AM

07-19-2011, 09:20 PM	#2
cyclone3d Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Huntsville, Alabama Posts: 511	I probably have some stuff that will work with it that I can send you for the price of shipping.

07-19-2011, 09:45 PM	#3
magkelly Veteran Member Join Date: May 2010 Photos: Gallery Posts: 5,901	I would grab an older PCI video card, yes, and also up that ram to the 2GB. You'll probably need an older version of Photoshop if you are going to go there too. The newer versions past say CS1 probably will need too much memory and a better video card than you can put in there. Depends upon what you're running really....

07-19-2011, 09:50 PM	#4
selar Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Sydney, Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 2,042	Its a very good idea getting a dedicated graphics card with lots of memory onboard the graphics card for photoediting software. What kind of graphics card you can put into your system will depend on what kind of connector is available for a graphics card on your mainboard. With a Pentium 4, i'd hazard a guess and say you would have a AGP connector, which will limit the choice of card that you can install, as none of the new ones will fit in an AGP connector, so you are probably looking at second hand or new old stock. Commonly, a gaming graphics card would give you the best performance in a photo editing application, as they may have more than one GPU, and more onboard memory. However a gaming graphics card would also produce a lot of heat and consume more power, so you need to ensure your computer power supply can handle the extra load, as well as provide enough air flow to cool the card.

07-19-2011, 10:06 PM	#6
reeftool Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Upstate New York Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 9,553	You can probably find a video card for it with a DVI output as long as the motherboard has an AGP slot. I have a similar machine and it still get some use but I built a new tower last winter and am now running Win 7 with an AMD X3 and it is incredibly faster so the old Pentium is now just used for backups. Just to give you a idea of what to expect. I have 1.5 gig of memory. It was originally 512 mb and I added a 1 gig card. Go with 2 gig for best results. The onboard Intel graphics has a 50% chance of crashing if I try to run Adobe Premeire Elements 4. Elements 6 runs ok but a little slow. Lightroom 3 will not run at all. Transcoding about 15 minutes of video using Windows Movie Maker from my camcorder will take about the same time as a shower and whipping up some dinner.

07-19-2011, 10:59 PM	#7
selar Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Sydney, Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 2,042	Here's a listing of all the video cards tested with Adobe CS5: Nvidia GeForce 7000, 8000, 9000, 100, 200, 400 series Nvidia Quadro FX x500, x700, x800, FX370, FX380, FX580 series, Quadro CX cards (The x represents the initial version number of the card. For example, x500 represents all card lines that end in 500, including the 4500, the 3500, and the 1500 series.) Nvidia Quadro 600, 2000, 6000, 4000 (Mac). ATI Radeon 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000 series Note: ATI X 1000 series cards are no longer being tested. ATI FireGL FireGL (R600 family GPUs x6xx series): V3600, V5600, V7600, V7700, V8600, V8650 FirePro (R700 family GPUs X7xx series): V3700, V3750, V5700, V7750, V8700, V8750 ATI FirePro FirePro (R800 family GPUs x8xx series): V3800, V3850, V5800, V7800, V8800, V9800 Intel Intel HD Graphics Intel GMA 4-Series Chipset Intel HD Graphics Family Intel HD Graphics P3000 Macintosh MacBook Air Intel GMA X3100 Source: Tested video cards \| Photoshop CS5

07-20-2011, 08:11 AM	#8
Parallax Senior Moderator Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: South Dakota Photos: Gallery Posts: 19,332	Originally posted by magkelly I would grab an older PCI video card, yes, and also up that ram to the 2GB. You'll probably need an older version of Photoshop if you are going to go there too. The newer versions past say CS1 probably will need too much memory and a better video card than you can put in there. Depends upon what you're running really.... I have a 5 year old XP machine with only 2 GB ram and it CS4 fine; Lightroom is another story, though. Originally posted by shooz I never had more than 2 gig until LR3 choked on it. I have always suspected the Lightroom issue is either video card related, or an incompatability with XP Media Center. It actually runs better on my netbook.

07-20-2011, 08:24 AM	#9
Steinback Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: GTA, ON, Canada Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 1,673	If you can post full specs we can give you a better idea of upgrade potential. The motherboard model, processor, power supply output, and current RAM specs will give some idea of what can be or is worth upgrading. Picking up a half decent but obsolete AGP graphics card for $5 on Craigslist shouldn't be out of the question. I'm still running a heavily modified Socket 478 P4 with some components dating back to 2003.

07-20-2011, 12:26 PM	#10
Ratmagiclady Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: GA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 13,563 Original Poster	reading all these replies. Spectacular, everyone. (And I might take you up on that, Cyclone, if you think you have helpful things) Fortunately, in this case, my editing program is PSP Pro Photo X2 Ultimate.. (Which sounds like an overblown razor commercial, but doesn't demand too much in the way of system performance. I know it runs slowly at times on 2gigs of RAM, (even a more modern kind) from seeing the difference when we upgraded this machine (the one I won't have access to) to four. ) But I'm pretty confident it'll work (key hurdle:will it work and if I can put in a video card to take up some of that RAM helpfully, that's great news. For those who've helped this analog gal with computereyness before, I expect to retain my spiffy new budget IPS monitor (which can run on all manner of inputs) and my good backup drive, (It'll have to become the primary photo storage, but I think I can have my sweetie hang onto some backups and I have a cheapie external drive that I don't consider rock-solid but works and ain't nothing. ) Basically, I should have everything I was going to make a real desktop around, it's just that'll likely have to wait till someone starts buying something, and for that, I need something that works. (Story of my life, every time I near0complete an output chain... Monkeywrench. The specs are it's a proprietary 'small form factor' PC, runs on XP and DDR RAM and I believe it's called a Compaq Evo d51s, ...ah, wait, here's what I have from email, apart from what I found out on the other machine, which is presently crashing. P4 2 GHz machine with 30 GB hard drive, CD(DVD?)/RW and 3.5" floppy drives. Compaq EVO D51s "small form factor". It has just one internal HD bay and only two available PCI slots. Video, sound, NIC, 4 USB and all other I/O ports are built-in. Current RAM is 1 GB and can be upgraded to 2GB maximum. Anyway, my general assessment is it ought to work: I ought to be able to put a small-sized video card (This machine can't take a double-slot or very long one, but otherwise ought to work if all else is compatible, and I may need to put in a wireless card in case where I end up staying while my sweetie's off in some remote outpost isn't amenable to running like a mile of Ethernet cord or anything, which has been just part of the furniture here a long time. ) Assuming the existing gig of RAM is in the form of one 1-gig card, it's a matter of thirty bucks to max that out and I can swing that.

07-20-2011, 02:47 PM	#11
jolepp Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Finland Photos: Albums Posts: 3,196	A 2 GHz CPU w. 2 G or RAM and Windows XP sounds perfectly adequate. One tip for teasing a snappier overall operation out of older hardware would be reinstalling XP; the exact cause of "Windows rot" (declining performance with time/use) is unclear, but in my experience it is a real issue. With 2 G of RAM newer versions of Windows are a questionable proposition. Whether a new graphics card significantly helps performance would depend on the used software being able to use its processing power. It might be worthwhile to get one just for the dedicated display memory (in effect smuggling in some more RAM despite the 2 G limit ) and/or being able to hook up your monitor via DVI. With AGP cards it is worth keeping in mind that all cards do not fit all motherboards (see: Accelerated Graphics Port - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

07-20-2011, 03:02 PM	#12
boriscleto Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: North Syracuse, NY Photos: Gallery Posts: 16,473	You could also turn off all the eye candy in XP. That might make it a bit "snappier". Given that it is a small form factor PC the 1GB is probably soldered to the MB and it has 1 RAM slot. I had a SFF HP and that's how it was set up.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

07-20-2011, 03:17 PM	#13
Ratmagiclady Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: GA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 13,563 Original Poster	Originally posted by boriscleto You could also turn off all the eye candy in XP. That might make it a bit "snappier". Given that it is a small form factor PC the 1GB is probably soldered to the MB and it has 1 RAM slot. I had a SFF HP and that's how it was set up. Actually, I'm informed that the 1GB comes in the form of two 512K cards, so it's just buying twice rather than once if that's what I've got to work with and all. So I dunno, it takes two one-gig cards of an old type to make out... It's a constraint, but what can you do. That's why I was talking about buolding a full-sized monster in the first place. What is is what is.

07-20-2011, 04:20 PM	#14
JeffJS Inactive Account Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Michigan, USA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 7,484	RML, Before Buying more memory for your machine, Check with HP and make sure you can actually USE it. I have an HP desktop that, the motherboard will accept 2Gb. However, somehow in the manufacturing of the total machine, they've fixed it so it will only support 1Gb. One can physically install 2Gb but it will only run 1. Also, on my machine, some of the outputs (power) have been removed or disabled from the motherboard. I learned this all the hard way and would hate to see anyone else learn the same lesson. You should be able to go to the HP website, punch in the serial number or model number of your computer and get all the specs and upgrade info you need. As you've presumed, the best way to speed your machine is to get a video card with on board memory. That way you are not giving up 20-30 percent of your total RAM for video memory.

07-20-2011, 06:38 PM	#15
cyclone3d Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Huntsville, Alabama Posts: 511	Does it look like the picture in this link? Compaq EVO D51S Pentium 4 2.4GHz 256MB 40GB CD FDD XP Professional Small Form Factor - B Compaq EVO D51S If so, I have a P4 2.4Ghz chip you can have as well as either a 40GB or 80GB hard drive if it hasn't already been upgraded in the past. Here is a BIN on Ebay for a 2GB set of RAM that should work for that system... and for only ~$17 shipped. 2GB KIT 2X1GB PC3200 DDR 400MHZ LOW DENSITY 64X8 184PIN \| eBay If it has a regulatr AGP slot.. not low profile, I should have a lower end video card I could send you as well... it would be better than the onboard.