Greetings all. Gonna give you a long story so you have the background info on this.
Picked up two PE1850's from a local tech recycling depot for $30 each. In the process of converting one of them into a desktop machine (in a nearly soundproof room next to my office). Added 6 extra GB of RAM.
As you might know, the onboard video is the weak link in this mission. My current config gives me a PCI-X riser card with a 100/133 slot, and a 66 slot.
My adventure began when I went hunting for a reasonable (yet cheap) PCI video card. For about $60, I picked up a Zotac GeForce GT430, with 512MB DDR3; the card claims to work with Vista and W7. So I put it in the machine and booted it up. The BIOS beeped once every 30 seconds or so - five times, and then it eventually booted. The system just screamed. Loved it. It worked just fine (minus the booting issues) for about a year. Then, last week, I tried a game (I'm not much of a gamer). Bad idea. Tried to play MLB 2K12 and the video card died. Machine wouldn't boot at all with that card in the rig. Kept taking me to a blank screen and just stayed there. When I popped the lid, the video card was almost too hot to pick up.
Went looking for another inexpensive PCI card (which are suddenly way harder to find than they were a year ago). Scared by my GT430 experience, I put in the PNY version of a GeForce FX5500. The machine works, but it doesn't like it the card - there are occasional artifacts left on the screen after windows close. And the performance leaves PLENTY to be desired. I went from a WEI of 4.6 with the ZOTAC card to a WEI of 2.0 now. Can't watch full-screen video (and I assume my video editing days on this rig are over).
"Experimenting" with different PCI video cards seems to be an expensive game, and is rapidly killing the joy I got from finding two of these machines for the price.. So I'm thinking maybe I replace the PCI-X riser with a PCI-E riser, which at least gives me more video options.
However, a search online shows me several different model numbers, and I'm afraid to pick up the wrong unit. The most common one I'm seeing is T8385, but there's also N8439, and HJ858.
Can anyone offer any expertise here? Thanks in advance. Do I change the riser? Is there a PCI vid card you know of that works, and offers decent performance without becoming a cooking surface?