radeon express 200 help

my neigbour gave me his old desktop setup. it has a radeon express 200 graphics solution. however i cant seem to update graphics. im running windows 7 32 bit and need proper drivers because performance is below what it should be. im getting 5fps in colin mcrae rally. i should be getting 100 fps

 

You'd probably be better off grabbing something cheap like https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004X8EO6Q/ref=mp_s_a_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1526125027&sr=8-16&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=graphics+card&dpPl=1&dpID=41FFH95LrDL&ref=plSrch&th=1&psc=1

I used to have a Xpress 200 as onboard graphics in an old shuttle sff case. This was 10 - 12 years ago.. it sucked back then. The 4670 I had blew it out of the water. I recall having a hard time with drivers for it even back then.

 

If memory serves, the AMD Catalyst driver pack should work: https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDCatalyst15-7WINReleaseNotes.aspx

I'm not 100% certain whether my memory is right, so no promises.

 

No no no, Catalyst 15.7 does not work with Radeon Xpress 200.

Radeon Xpress 200 is based on R300 GPU (same as Radeon 9500-9800 and X300-X600, in fact it's a Radeon X300 without VRAM). The latest driver that works is Catalyst 10.2 which officially supports Win98 to Vista, however the Vista driver can be installed on later Windows versions with Vista compatibility setting. Just enable it on the setup executable, it's in "C:\ATI\" once extracted.

Don't expect miracles though, it isn't a powerful GPU even when new.

 

Thanks for the correction!

 

No worries, I know it's an old integrated GPU thus people tend to forget about it. R300 is legendary though, whipping Nvidia's sorry ass at that time. Anyway, I had some hands-on experience on R300 GPU since the three HP Compaq laptops that I owned before have them, I just said what I know.

P.S. Catalyst 15.7 is the last stable driver for TeraScale 2/3 GPU.

 

anywho to people that are nice and capable of thinking. what about the nvidia gt 710

 

Err... that's not really a good graphics card, good for HTPC though, especially for passively cooled variants.

Anyway, what's in your system? Motherboard, CPU, RAM, power supply? Can't recommend a card without a good grasp of your PC.

 

not sure about motherboard
amd athlon 3500+
1.5gb ram
250gb hdd


I just want to be able to game some older games and run youtube at 1080p, not sure if i need ram or a card or both.

edit i literally know nothing about older desktops im a laptop guy.

 

Either that 6450 or the 710 might make it. You might be better off stepping up to 1030 but they are almost $100. Make sure you get a GDDR5 1030. My guess is whatever you get is going to need to be low power and not need an external power connector in a PC that old. 1080p gaming might be a stretch. You might need to go down to 1600x900 or 720.

 

Hmm... a single core K8 with an AM2 motherboard, it may even bottleneck a GT 710, but if you can get a used one for cheap then go for it. Note that GT 710 is twice as powerful as HD 6450 or HD 7450.

If the motherboard supports AM2+ processors then I can say it has good potential. Otherwise you're limited to dual core Athlon.

1.5GB RAM is enough for an retro gaming desktop running XP, though I'd recommend upping the 512MB stick to 1GB so the memory will fully run in dual channel mode. I'd recommend 4GB or more for later Windows versions however.

 

Good call on the 6450 vs 710, didn't realize the gap was that wide, even with the 710 having GDDR3 vs GDDR5 on a 6450 it's faster. If you really want to attempt 1080p gaming you're probably going to have to step up to a 1030 with GDDR5. It's still going to be a stretch. It's a Pascal chip so you'll have good driver support going forward as nVidia has EOL'd Fermi so Kepler might be coming next year..(710/730 are Kepler).

tl:dr; Get a 730 or 1030. Make sure whichever one you get it has GDDR5 not (G)DDR3. 1030 preferably it would probably be able to eek out 1080p sometimes and take some load off the CPU.

Definitely +1 on the upping system RAM to 4GB.

 

ok so i can geta 2gb stick for 50 thats 100 for 4gb
i can get a 1030 for 120 so im looking at 240 after tax and you guys positive my cpu wont bottleneck

 

As I said, your processor will bottleneck a GT 710, let alone a GT 1030. To be frank, it will bottleneck every new graphics cards in the market, maybe except the GeForce 210. Therefore, unless you upgrade the processor, GT 1030 won't do you any good.

On a related note, if you can find the motherboard model then I may be able to tell you if your board supports an AM2+ CPU. If so that will open up a lot of decent CPU options like the tri-core or quad-core Phenom. CPU-Z or HWMonitor can help you on this, they're free too.