Computer users who have purchased retail computers in the past have always had a difficult time when upgrading their systems video accelerator. More often then not, especially with the low to mid range PCs, the video is often of lower quality and integrated onto the motherboard without the availability of an AGP add on slot. This leaves your options pretty limited when searching for the right upgrade.

Recently the surge in Small Form Factor PCs has spread that common retail user upgrading problem to the enthusiasts level. Many of you loved the idea of the early Shuttle SV24/SV and more recently the Shuttle SS50 and SS40 barebones, but were turned off by the onboard shared memory video card (despite its decent performance) and the lack of an AGP add on slot. Thankfully there were companies who never had this problem, such as AMS who produced the AGP equipped gBox, however even with the AGP slot, users still flocked to the more affordable and feature filled SS40/SS50 systems. Shuttle has also followed their SS line with the AGP equipped SS51. Despite these recent advances, the amount of AGPless systems in the marketplace certainly warrants the need for PCI video accelerators for sometime.

Current Systems that can benefit from a PCI video upgrade:

• MSI Hermes


• Shuttle SV24/25


• Shuttle SS40g/50


• VIA Eden and EPIA-M motherboards


• Thousands of retail AGPless models

Why the video upgrade?

Even though onboard AGP graphics have come along way over the last few years, especially with the recent releases of the integrated SiS 315 graphics, Intel 845G, and the Nvidia nForce2 graphics, the video performance on all of these can benefit from the right PCI video upgrade.

The primary problem with onboard AGP graphics is they utilize the system memory. Generally the level of memory dedicated to graphics is user defined in the bios from anywhere from 512k to 64mb. This Shared Memory Architecture approach is cost effective but degrades memory and thus system performance. A PCI video memory upgrade will use the video cards memory and not shared memory with the system.

Enter ATI:

Though some of Nvidia’s partners make some attractive PCI card options, ATI based cards will be the focus for this review as there are currently more choices on the ATI PCI front along with a more modern feature set via the Radeon 9000 core.

The Cards:

The four cards used are the PCI 7500 and 9000 offerings from PowerColor along with a PCI 7500 card from the CompUSA brand and finally the Hercules PCI 9000.

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• Deeper Look (0 of 4)
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