Bill Cunningham wrote:


What do you think of this Paul? It's more in my price range.
https://www.outletpc.com/ez6786.html

IDK about XP drivers.

Bill


The edge connector is PCI Express, a different standard
than PCI or AGP. PCI Express are definitely cheaper,
and there are a lot more to choose from. But you're not
going to find that in a year 2000 computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

"Year created 2004; 13 years ago"

Before going shopping, you have to review the slots
available on the motherboard. The make and model of the
PC would be a start. If you built the computer yourself
from parts, then the make and model of the motherboard
would be good to know. There are a few motherboards
made by PCChips, that have no useful markings whatsoever
on them. The rest can have an identifier in the silk
screen. For example, my first PC motherboard was an
Asus P2B-S, as part of a homebuild around year 2000.
And it had PCI and AGP slots, but no PCI Express.
I couldn't put that card above in it. I could also
stick an ATI 9800 Pro in it, but the stupid
motherboard would beep and there would be no
video. That was caused by a lack of slot power.

There is "selection lore" with each socket standard,
so the faster you identify what you need, the faster
we can narrow the field. The FX5200 for example,
is a good universal AGP donor. The 6200 on AGP would
be a close second, at this late date. They're not the
nicest cards (super-fast gaming), but they're likely to work.

This is a great page for AGP. It's only missing
a tiny bit of selection lore (for cards you're
not likely to find for sale new now anyway).

http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html

PCI Express has selection rules too, but I'm not
aware of any nice summary pages, for the few years
worth of stuff that caused problems. PCI Express is
supposed to auto-negotiate (like most hardware),
but some combos, the "faster" cards refused to
gear down to the "slower" slot speed.

It's the same with SATA hard drives. A VIA 8237
Southbridge can do SATA I, but if you connect
a SATA II or SATA III drive, they won't work.
If you set the jumper on the SATA II drive, to
Force150, it works with an 8237. However, most
of the drives today are SATA III, and the jumper
on those only sets the drive to SATA II, which
won't work with the SATA I Southbridge ports that
don't negotiate properly. So the PCI Express slot
issue is similar to one of those issues. Except
video cards don't have a jumper like that.

AGP and PCI can have voltage issues. And if you
put your mind to it, say find an SIS305 in the
junk bin at your surplus store, you could blow
out the AGP slot on your motherboard. My P4B Rev.105
motherboard, was one of the first equipped with
a magic shutoff circuit, just to prevent the
SIS305 mis-keyed AGP cards from blowing up
the slot :-) At the time, I found the warning,
and I made the guy at my computer store take
the motherboard out of the box and verify it
was revision 1.05. It's highly unlikely you
could find one of those "bad" video cards today,
and that's an example of "selection lore".

Paul