OK, PC is a few years old, when we watch stuff off the internet in “small” screen it is smooth but when we watch it on “full screen” it is jerky, even if we pause it and let the video fully load first. HD stuff is a non starter.
Is it a duff graphics card? Can I fix this?

Sounds like you might need a pokier graphics card

agree ^^^^

Does it have an integrated video card? mine does and has a max memory of 8MB :o, added a PCI card with 256MB and all is well, now get the W7 aero stuff

Naked ladies are no good jerky

Cheers all, what cost am I looking at for some pokier pokey?

£25-30 upwards, although I wouldn’t spend a lot more than this, maybe up to £50

First though, you need to see what type of expansion slots there are on the motherboard and find a card that fits, you may have PCI, AGP, PCI-E..

For me (due to the 5 year old nature of my PC) I was stuck with PCI and most graphic cards seemed to be PCI-E (which replaces PCI, PCI-X and AGP). You can get cards for the older interfaces, just need to search, I was lucky as a mate had an (old) spare one which is an NVIDIA Geforce FX 5200 256MB.

It could just be a case of bad drivers also! Worth noting… If you tell me your model I’ll tell you what card to get or if it should be smoother, I’ve got a 7800gtx knocking around somewhere that’d see you right for the next 5 years easy if it’ll fit

Cheers, is it the details of the Mainboard you need? If so it’s a Biostar NF61S-M2 TE. On the blurb it does mention 1PCI-Ex16, 2PCI, 1PCI-Ex1 and it’s for an AMD processor. ……..

Your system has an onboard one of these: NVIDIA GeForce 6100 GPU, On Board Graphic Max. Memory Share Up to 256MB, and given this description onthe nvidia site you’d think it’d be good enough:

The NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6500, 6200, 6150* and 6100* GPUs feature a revolutionary design that delivers best-in-class performance on today’s hottest games and applications. The only GPUs in their class to support Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0, these GPUs power the latest effects without compromising performance. Further, these GPUs include NVIDIA® PureVideo™ to deliver crisp, vibrant video to the PC.

I’m wondering how much memory is being allocated to it, it can use up to 256MB, with this being shared from the system memory.

So how much memory does your PC have? and how much is being allocated (usually through the BIOS) to the video card?

*** agree with alexxx on the drivers front….

So how much memory does your PC have? and how much is being allocated (usually through the BIOS) to the video card?

Err…no idea. At all. How do I check this and the Drivers?

Err…no idea. At all. How do I check this and the Drivers?

Which version of Windows are you running? If it’s XP, just left click the “Start” menu, then right click on “My Computer” and a menu will come up. Then left click the bottom option, entitled “Properties”. This will tell you how much RAM the PC has.

For more info about the whole computer, click the following link…

http://www.filehippo.com/download_speccy/

Download that software, run it, it will tell you all about all the hardware on your machine, including the RAM and your current Graphics being run etc.

FWIW, I will soon be upgrading my Graphics Card in my PC, it’s an Nvidia GeForce 9500GT with 1GB of RAM. It’s only a year old, it is more than capable of running proper HD films etc. it’s just that I play a few games, and it’s out of its depth by the time I want to play Call of Duty at full resolution on my 1080HD screen. But for any media playing, it’ll be fine for years to come. It was only £50 new, I’d take £20 for it, and it would plug straight into your machine as you have the required PCI-E slot to fit it. It only draws a very low power consumption too, not like the bigger more powerful cards, and it’s pretty small and quiet in use.

@Horse; bite mboy’s hand off – I would if my PC had PCI-E 😉

mboy, thanks for all this, it says it’s a AMD Sempron le-1150 with 2.01GHz, 992MB of RAM.
I’ll take that graphics card when you’re done with it, cheers!!
I’ll run that doofer and see what it says,

H

bellerophon – Member
Your system has an onboard one of these: NVIDIA GeForce 6100 GPU, On Board Graphic Max. Memory Share Up to 256MB, and given this description onthe nvidia site you’d think it’d be good enough:

The NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6500, 6200, 6150* and 6100* GPUs feature a revolutionary design that delivers best-in-class performance on today’s hottest games and applications. The only GPUs in their class to support Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0, these GPUs power the latest effects without compromising performance. Further, these GPUs include NVIDIA® PureVideo™ to deliver crisp, vibrant video to the PC.

I’m wondering how much memory is being allocated to it, it can use up to 256MB, with this being shared from the system memory.

So how much memory does your PC have? and how much is being allocated (usually through the BIOS) to the video card?

*** agree with alexxx on the drivers front….

No, it’s not the memory allocated. That card simply doesn’t support the right type of video accel which Flash/most web video uses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo

To the OP, make sure your graphic card drivers and Flash is up to date.

I feel out of my depth here, have to admit I don’t understand a thing you’re saying, but thank you! Downloaded that software and ran it and this is what it says
Monitor
Name X220W D-sub on NVIDIA GeForce 6100 nForce 405
Current Resolution 1680×1050 pixels
Work Resolution 1680×1022 pixels
State enabled, primary, output devices support
Monitor Width 1680
Monitor Height 1050
Monitor BPP 32 bits per pixel
Monitor Frequency 60 Hz
Device \\.\DISPLAY1\Monitor0
GeForce 6100 nForce 405
GPU C61
Device ID 10DE-03D1
Revision A3
Subvendor Biostar Microtech Int’l (1565)
Technology 90 nm
DirectX Support 9.0c
DirectX Shader Model 3.0
OpenGL Support 2.0
Bus Interface FPCI
GPU Clock 425 MHz
Memory Clock 666 MHz
Driver nv4_disp.dll
Driver version 6.14.11.7813
ForceWare version 178.13
BIOS Version 5.61.32.22.01
ROPs 2
Shaders Vertex 2/Pixel 2
Memory Type System
Physical Memory 32 MB
Virtual Memory 256 MB
Pixel Fillrate 0.8 GPixels/s
Texture Fillrate 0.8 GTexels/s

An extra 1GB of memory might help on top of a better graphics card.

Graphics card is unlikely to fix this problem – desktop video playback is normally down to the processor. A few graphics cards do speed up h.264 playback, but normally only when used with a specific program.

I’d not expect a 2GHZ machine to play back HD video remotely smoothly, and changing the graphics card won’t fix it.

Sooo… Put up with it till I upgrade? If that’s the case that’s fine, just wanted to see if I could fix something.

You could buy a cheap motherboard + cpu + ram bundle for 150 quid or so, and then stick it in the case with your existing hard drive etc.

Graphics card is unlikely to fix this problem – desktop video playback is normally down to the processor. A few graphics cards do speed up h.264 playback, but normally only when used with a specific program.

Errr, quite the contrary actually. Given that his motherboard has an Nvidia 6 series chipset fitted, and the 6 series doesn’t support the Nvidia PureVideo that most flash and web videos use (as stated above by retro83), then a 9 series GFX card (such as my 9500GT) that does support it, is really going to make a massive difference!

An extra Gig of RAM might help the system overall too, but it’s not going to make significant difference to the graphics though.

Sooo… Put up with it till I upgrade? If that’s the case that’s fine, just wanted to see if I could fix something.

You can definitely fix it mate. My GFX card would make some difference, and if it didn’t, I’ll happily refund you if you send it back to me in the same condition… As it is, I actually quoted £20 of the top of my head (which I’ll honour) without checking prices on ebay, they seem to fetch more like £30 at the moment actually which quite surprised me!

I’d not expect a 2GHZ machine to play back HD video remotely smoothly, and changing the graphics card won’t fix it.

What? HD is only 720p, not 1080! HD playback isn’t really a test for the latest of ultra low powered PC’s, a 2GHz desktop shouldn’t struggle, as long as it has the right hardware and driver support (which is currently not the case).

You could buy a cheap motherboard + cpu + ram bundle for 150 quid or so, and then stick it in the case with your existing hard drive etc.

He COULD spend his money on a cheap Mobo/processor/RAM upgrade… BUT unless it’s a retail copy of Windows (which most aren’t, certainly not if you didn’t build the PC yourself in the first place) the copy of Windows is locked to the original Mobo. So upgrading the Mobo/CPU/RAM would also require the purchase of a new Windows license!

My recommendation (not just cos it helps me out, I can sell the card on ebay quite happily) would be my GFX card, and another Gigabyte of RAM (click on crucials website, then click “scan my system”, this will tell you what RAM you need to buy), then install the lot. Should make a marked difference. Oh, and make sure all the drivers are up to date.

And like I say, if you’re not happy with the GFX card, then return it and I’ll refund you.

Oh, and if you do want it, just let me know… It’s yours, though you may have to wait a few days, possibly til the end of next week, to give me the time to get a new one suitable for my needs…

No, it’s not the memory allocated. That card simply doesn’t support the right type of video accel which Flash/most web video uses:

Yeah my bad, I hadn’t looked at the spec close enough 😳

I still standby adding a card and at a punt of £20 for mboy’s card I’d give it a go, especially when given the option of a refund. It made a huge difference to my system when I added a sperate card, but then my PC has a particularly shite onboard graphics system.

Opps, I stand corrected, didn’t realise nvidia cards did h.264 acceleartion for all flash movies now… the sempron won’t do smooth HD playback without the acceleration tho.