Aero and hardware requirements, Vista ready PCI card! What ya reckon?

[cunawarit]

Last Xmass I got a new Dell. It was a very cheap Celeron D 2.53 GHz with 1 Gb of RAM. The only minus point? The cheap motherboard has no AGP or PCI-E slots, it is all PCI.

I thought I was stuffed Aero wise, until manufacturers started looking into PCI cards again. I guess I'm not be that out of the ordinary, there has to be quite a few people out there with no option other than a PCI card, yet their machines are hardly old.

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release...ease_id=168116

Do you think fancy PCI cards likely to run Aero OK?

From this game-centric review it appears that performance is nothing to write home about...

http://www.techspot.com/review/15-vi...eon-x1300-pci/

I have to admit that I run Windows Classic view and a very plain fluxbox theme because I don’t like desktop eye-candy. However, at the same time I want to give Aero a fair chance. I just need to decide if I am buying a whole new Vista ready PC or just investing on one of these not-so-good, yet kind of expensive, graphics cards.

[croak77]

Maybe another option would be to swipe out motherboards.

[Dr. C]

Maybe another option would be to swipe out motherboards.

I would not recommend this to run Windows Vista or XP since it will very likely disable the Windows XP that came with the Dell. This is due to Windows product activation alone and we haven't started with WGA. My understanding is that with major manufactures like Dell Windows XP product activation is locked to the motherboard bios. So if one changes the motherboard it may mean getting another version of Windows XP (full retail) or paying full retail for Vista.

[cunawarit]

Maybe another option would be to swipe out motherboards.

I have to admit that roughly since I finished my University degree (1998) I haven’t followed the basics of what is available hardware wise. I suspected there was a chance that Dell might use fancy pants cases and mountings that made that sort of thing difficult, that's why I hadn't really considered it.

I would not recommend this to run Windows Vista or XP since it will very likely disable the Windows XP that came with the Dell.

Yes, that's something else I had considered. I was planning to buy the full Vista and not the upgrade anyway. All I got with my Dell was the ability to make a restore CD, my previous job at a University got you a whole pack of licenses for home use. It was nice not to have to pay for software back then.