My new Visiontek Radeon HD 2400 Pro video card
May 22, 2008 Technology
A stand-alone video card will make a PC run faster than the “integrated video” circuitry built into most modern motherboards for two reasons:
1 – The memory used by the integrated video circuitry is “stolen” from the available system RAM, reducing the amount of memory available for applications and data.
2 – The video processing is done by the system’s primary CPU, “stealing” processor time from the programs you’re running in the process.
That being said, I have never really felt the need to install a video card in any of my PC’s because I didn’t think it would make that much of a difference. Besides, most of them seemed to require that the computer’s power supply be replaced with a beefier model, a proposition that just didn’t make sense to me given the minor difference that I thought I would realize by adding a stand-alone video card.
Well, while I was out shopping the other day I ran across a deal on a Visiontek Radeon HD 2400 Pro video card that was just too good to pass up (and my existing power supply was plenty hefty enough to handle it), so I bought it and took it home with me. Now this isn’t a top-of-the-line video card by any stretch of the imagination with its 520 MHZ GPU and meager 256 Megs of onboard DDR2 video memory, so I wasn’t expecting a dramatic increase in system speed.
Except for one little glitch (the USB ports stopped working because of a resource conflict which was quickly resolved by disabling the PS2 mouse port in the BIOS), installation was a breeze. I immediately noticed a dramatic increase in system speed with programs opening much faster and the various “windows” popping into view in a flash as I switched among them by clicking their icons in the task bar. Better yet, the image and video quality on my 22″ Gateway high definition LCD monitor is now simply incredible!
I must say that this one upgrade is hands-down the best one I have ever made in terms of performance gain vs. cost. While hard-core “gamers” would probably hold their noses and sniff at it, I believe the Visiontek Radeon HD 2400 Pro is a very capable video card for the average user – and the price makes it an even better deal.
August 23rd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
You know , I recently purchased a Sapphire HD 2400 Pro PCIe (OEM Version) for $22.99 from Newegg and it works great on my lowly 250 Watt Compaq power supply. This is on a Celeron Processor, 1GB Ram and Vista Premium. Im not playing huge games like Crysis but Quake 4 runs at a nice speed on Low to Medium Graphics.