Adding these ports is as simple as installing a PCI card in your system. And the only one I would recommend personally is Adaptec’s DuoConnect. This card will give you 3 Hi-Speed USB ports and 2 Firewire ports in one easy to install card. Since I use my Firewire and Hi-Speed USB ports for external drives, as well as for importing video from my DV camcorder, I demand a stable interface to keep my data intact and flowing quickly. Since Adaptec is highly regarded for its interface cards, it is the only one I would turn to in this case. Their DuoConnect is stable and fast for both applications.

These cards, indeed any of the Hi-Speed USB and/or Firewire cards available, can be added to any system with an open PCI port. You more than likely have a few of these ports open in your system. Giving your PC these new ports will create some more options for your computing experience and extend your older system’s effective lifespan.

Adaptec's DuoConnect card installs extra Hi-Speed USB and Firewire ports in a snap.

Video Card
A very serious upgrade you can make is replacing your old video card. If you use 3D applications, or feel the need for a second monitor to expand your screen space, a new video card is definitely the way to go.

Ranging in price from $100 to $400, consumer level video cards offer a lot of different features and improvements over your existing card. But be warned that most new cards will not give you their top rated performance when installed in older machines. Case in point: the AGP standard.

Pretty much all video cards are now using the AGP interface. AGP though, has changed over the past few years; we now have the AGP2x, AGP4x, and AGP 8x standards. If your machine is about 3 years old, you’re at AGP2x. You can still use the newer 4x and sometimes 8x cards, but they simply will not be used to their full potential. In any event, getting a new video card will be a terrific boost if you use your PC for graphics work, especially 3D.

To better illustrate my point, I contacted a few video card makers for some of their video cards. I will be upgrading my fiancée’s three year old Dell system, which sports an AGP2x 32Mb GeForce 256 video card, a very fast card at the time she bought the machine, on my advise no less, and we’re still together. Imagine that.

Using a few benchmarks I created to test video card performance in Maya 4.5 and SPEC’s viewperf benchmarks for 3d Studio Max, I set off to see what sort of gains this old Dell gets with the new video cards, and whether it’s worth the top money for the top cards, or better for the middle range upgrades.

The ATI Radeon 9000pro allows you to work on two desktop displays simultaneously, an essential for graphics work.

ATI Radeon 9000pro
ATI kindly sent me this card as a very good option for the Dell system’s video upgrade. The 9000pro is a generation or two behind the top performing video cards from ATI (namely the 9700pro). It is an AGP4x model, is compatible with AGP2x and comes with 64Mb of memory.

Most notably, the 9000pro has dual display capability, allowing you to add a second monitor or LCD display to your PC. Once I moved to dual displays about 18 months ago, I never looked back. Having a large desktop spanning two displays is not only nice, but essential for graphics work. Right off the bat, this $200 retail card brings a huge improvement to the table with dual displays.

As far as performance, the 9000pro did not perform as well as I had expected in my 3D tests, but I attribute that to the fact that it was somewhat held back by the Dell’s slower architecture (namely the AGP 2x). Though there was an appreciable gain in the card’s overall performance, it wasn’t stunning over the Dell’s GeForce 256. Now keep in mind, though, that the GeForce 256 is still a rockin’ card. Most consumer PCs sold through Dell at the time only had GeForce 2 cards or even something slower. These do not perform on the same level as a GeForce 256, so you can expect better performance if you’re upgrading from a normal consumer GeForce 2 or such card. The addition of better DVD playback and dual-monitor support is enough to make any new video card a worthwhile upgrade, including the affordable 9000pro. With an agp 4x system, it should be a no brainer.