I have a dell optiplex G1 (256 mb Ram/350 mhz processor, 20 gig hd) It has a 2mb onboard AGP video card which doenst support opengl. Im gettin a new computer in like 5 months, but thats along time to wait, and i want to play quake 3. My question is since there aren't any AGP ports in this computer can i buy a pci card and install it.. because this is an old pc i don't know if it would overheat and or something? And which card should i get? that will atleast get me 80 fps in quake 3 on res 840x600 or smth. (tweaked config though -> no dynamic lights and fps eating cmds) Secondly, when im surfing the net, a lot of flash pop ups and stuff slow down my computer pretty bad, is this cuz of processor speed/ memory cache or it cuz the gpu is s---ty? ty in advanced.

lol.. I dun think with those kinda specs that u could even dream of running quake at 80fps. I hav an old 32mb TnT card that runs on my other 400Mhz comp and that runs ok, U could buy a pci card but unless u get one 2nd hand it would cost around $80 for a basic GeForce 4 MX i think. I think ur beta off just saving it for the new comp u say u r plannin to get... -------------------- Asus P4P800S mb P4 2.4Ghz (800Mhz) 1Gb DDR 400Mhz Ram Geforce FX 5600 128mb

thx for responding. I have enough money for a new comp right now.. but im waiting till pci-express ddr2 ram and some stuff to come out first. I had a pentium 2 350 with a 4mb agp card before and it ran quake at 640x400 res with 45 fps. So i think if i buy the right pci card with this comp (p2 350 also) it might be able to get atleast 80 fps on mode 4 res(800x)And at price watch it says a geforce 2 mx400 64mb is 60 dollers.. but i dunno if that will get me my fps.. so keep responding ppl :X

PCI or not if its a Geforce 2 it could easily outperform integrated video. Im sure that it will boost your Quake 3 fps. Pentium 4 2.6ghz eVGA Geforce FX 5900 SE SB Audigy LS 512mb DDR400 3dmark03 : 6022

Thx.. i think ill get a geforce 2 mx400 pci card or maybe that ati radeon 7000 64 mb..

What a coincidence..ahh...? I'm testing this same pc model with a e-ge force4 MX 440 nvidia card, this is an optiplex, same model like yours. It's my friend's, a year ago somebody on his family got like 5 optiplex from their employer because they were upgrading to new dell's,.. by the way all were password locked (supervisor password).. anyway, I reset it with the jumper on mobo. Well so far, this is the upgrade history from then til now on his: added ram memory to 256 mb. move from win95 to xp pro. had a 4 gb. hdd., added a 200 gb. wd caviar. vervatim 52x24x52x c-rw. and..the pci ge-force4 mx440 (last week) so far..I try to uninstall the onboard agp card. and installed the nvidia drivers for the g-4, my pal took it home and installed Midnight Outlaw Illegal Street Drag Nitro Edition, but seems the pci card is not doing any improvement, and still detecting the agp card, so I told him to try some other 3d games for now,.. but the next day he called and told me he just could not reboot to xp, just a black screen with a single dash blinking,...well, what a hell..is going on now..? I tought we were pushing so much on this system,,without adding fans for cooling..etc. Told him to bring the pc back to my place... I couldn't even see any hdd in DOS, I did a MBR /rebuild but nope..I tought of corrupted .ini files, etc, but coudn't run chkdsk in dos,,etc.. at all, so ..I wonder..to install wi98se(and then try opengl) on the original hdd. 4 gb. and again xp pro on the wd 200gb. hdd.(xp pro was running good so far) He may not like any linux bistro, so I didn't even try, I Just decided this weekend to make time for the windows reinstall. I do all this for fun, I have a normal job like everybody else.. but thanks to forums like this I've learned a lot, and fixed my own pc's new and older than this optiplex, but this in particular is a wonderful system so far, I've own 4 dells. myself, I do upgrades to a lot of pc's for friends and to my friend's friends pc's, for free, exept the cost of upgrades, memory , drivers..etc, some times I pay for things and they forget to pay, but any way most of them just pull a 20 or a 50 bill and hand it to me ..well ..It feels good. I always insist that tey must learn to fix their own pc's. if they can't affort the qualifyed techy, that in the first place make me learn more of this hobby. Well..! Sorry for this long post, I'll post tomorrow my new findings on this adventure... ps. and still learning english ..bye.

I'm back, Everything went like this: With the pci on the slot well, I just installed xp pro again and before anything not even antivirus installed, I went to device manager and found the yellow sign on the ati dysplay adapter, and on vga controller, I then desable both, it didn't found anything related to the nvidia card so what I did was to reboot in safe mode, and installed first the ADM drivers from the drivers cd, then the actual drivers on the cd, reboot and found now the adapter on system devices, althou with the yellow sign on it, what I did next was to desable the onboard ATI card and enabled the nvidia pci card also the desabled the vga controller that also had the yellow sign on it. that's all, it worked. and to make sure I just went to dysplay properties, advanced , adapter and there it was, smooth and neat the nvidia adapter... quake 3 wasn't nearby so the only one on my reach was..UT2003, hell man let me tell ya, this babe screem...like a nasty bich.. well.. in resume apart from the lost of features on the bios for this box to desable the onboard card(you lazy people on dell) this old machine for now is kinking..good luck to you.. will be around..bye.