Graphics Card on an old PC?

[GeoffF100]

My 10 year old PC is now running Lununtu 18.04 well. I have doubled the RAM to 2 GB, doubled the processing power to a Core 2 Duo E6700 (Passmark 1694), and doubled the SATA II disk transfer rate by installing a 120 GB SSD. According to the Windows Experience Index, the weak link in the chain is now graphics performance. Most websites load quite snappily, but Google News is a bit of a yawn. I expect that is because of all those little pictures. It occurred to me that installing a low end graphics card might help. In addition to helping graphics performance, Firefox can offload processing to the graphics card. This one appears to be Amazon's cheapest:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listi ... dition=new

https://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/90 ... etter-igp/

Power consumption is 19W. I should be able to get away with that, despite my meagre 250W power supply. The new processor has the same power consumption as the old one, and hopefully the hard disk powers down when it is not being used.

Is this upgrade likely to be worthwhile?

[supremetwo]

My 10 year old PC is now running Lununtu 18.04 well. I have doubled the RAM to 2 GB, doubled the processing power to a Core 2 Duo E6700 (Passmark 1694), and doubled the SATA II disk transfer rate by installing a 120 GB SSD. According to the Windows Experience Index, the weak link in the chain is now graphics performance. Most websites load quite snappily, but Google News is a bit of a yawn. I expect that is because of all those little pictures. It occurred to me that installing a low end graphics card might help. In addition to helping graphics performance, Firefox can offload processing to the graphics card. This one appears to be Amazon's cheapest:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listi ... dition=new

https://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/90 ... etter-igp/

Power consumption is 19W. I should be able to get away with that, despite my meagre 250W power supply. The new processor has the same power consumption as the old one, and hopefully the hard disk powers down when it is not being used.

Is this upgrade likely to be worthwhile?

I had issues with an Nvidia card on an older computer with Win 10. Too much emphasis on drivers for gaming with frequent updating.

No troubles after a switch to an ATI Radeon card.

[GeoffF100]

I thought the Radeon cards took too much power, but perhaps I am wrong. The Radeon cards use the open source drivers on LInux, which simplifies matters. Amazon has some very cheap second hand cards. Perhaps I should take a closer look when I have time.

[BobbyD]

Try an image blocker add on for FF and see if it increases the speed of problematic pages.

[supremetwo]

I thought the Radeon cards took too much power, but perhaps I am wrong. The Radeon cards use the open source drivers on LInux, which simplifies matters. Amazon has some very cheap second hand cards. Perhaps I should take a closer look when I have time.

Power comparisons here:-
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ge ... 122-6.html

[GeoffF100]

I will have to try an image blocker. I might also speed things up by blocking Firefox from using my weak GPU for processing. There are no problems with the GT 710 graphics card under Linux:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/co ... untu_1610/

The Nvidia drivers are needed only for gaming, so I could stick with the more stable open source drivers.

[schober]

Try turning javascript off

[GeoffF100]

I have done some further research. The GT 710 1 GB appears to be the only reasonable card for the job here. The Passmark score is about the same as that for the integrated graphics in my main Haswell i5 desktop:

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu. ... rce+GT+710

My 10 year old PC has a first generation PCI x16 socket, which is half as fast as the (backward compatible) PCI 2.0.

The Cooler Master calculator said that I need a 242 W power supply, and I have 250 W, so I should be OK:

http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/

I can pick up the MSI GeForce GT 710 1GB Graphics Card locally for £30.77:

https://www.cclonline.com/product/20080 ... A/VGA3375/

The card comes with two brackets for fitting the D-SUB, HDMI and DV-I-D sockets into two half size slots. There does not appear to be a competitor for this card that will fit my PC, consume little enough power, and offer prospects of a good performance boost, at a price that makes sense for that machine.

[GeoffF100]

That should have read PCI Express x16 (which is half the speed of PCI Express 2.0). My 1024x768 monitor only has a D-SUB connector. Providing a D-SUB socket for the graphics card puts the PCI Express x1 slot out of action. Apart from that, I only have two PCI sockets, which do not appear to be compatible with modern cards.

The PCI Express x1 socket might have supported a WiFi card. However, the aerials would then have been pointing sideways (rather than upwards as they would in a tower PC), which might have been troublesome. They are removable, so perhaps another pair of aerials could be connected to the card. Nonetheless, I am currently getting a good signal from an ultra fit USB WiFi adaptor, provided that I point the PC in the right direction.

[GeoffF100]

Having completed my investigation, I am having doubts about whether this upgrade is worthwhile. The articles that I have looked at suggest that adding a graphics card will only marginally increase performance, unless you play games.

[Infrasonic]

Having completed my investigation, I am having doubts about whether this upgrade is worthwhile. The articles that I have looked at suggest that adding a graphics card will only marginally increase performance, unless you play games.

I'd agree.
Most day to day stuff like web browsing is going to be CPU bound.

[GeoffF100]

I have turned off "Smooth scrolling" and "Use hardware acceleration when it is available" in Firefox. Scrolling is now much cleaner. Google News now loads in 4 seconds, the little pictures are there almost immediately and I am able to scroll down straight away. A huge improvement.