Graphics Card advice

[spacemanc]

Let me know your preferences for the hookers and blow too

[Bamboo]

You really need to bust open your case and actually look at the power supply and see how many watts it has. Might even do one of the online chats with dell and see if your computer uses a standard PSU or not. You may be stuck with like a 200-250 watt cheap-o.

I found both a Dell and Emachine like that in my dumpster a couple months ago with similar system specs to yours.

[TofuwRice]

It doesn't even matter if you get a any sort of newer card anyways because your card uses PCI-E and not pci-e x16 which ALL newer cards use. So, im assuming your motherboard only supports a pci-e bus and not pci-e x16. Any type of card in the 8 or 9 nvidia series won't fit in your PC or any Ati Radeon in the 3 or 4 series. Also, your psu probably won't support any of these as most of them need a direct pci-e plug into it + usually at least 300w is needed even for the lower end cards.

Your best solution is probably to build a low-mid range computer from scratch, as your dell is too old to upgrade. Right now prices to build a decent computer that can play PR at all MAX at mid to high res is pretty cheap, even cod4 or crysis. Im guessing this would cost 500ish(CDN dollars of course.).

[[R-DEV]Pride]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll have a look inside and see what i can find out.

[spacemanc]

Yeah good point Rice. Thing is when one component is ready to update in your comp, then your whole computer is usually ready, because all the components will be a generation behind.

You could get something similar to this below, for about £350 if you shop around, and it will be seriously powerful.



** This is just to give you an idea - Ive not researched those components.

[[R-DEV]Pride]

Well i opened up the case and discovered that I have a 375W PSU, which is running:

3.2Ghz P4
2048Mb RAM
1 HDD
1 7300 LE
2 CD/DVD Drives


And loking at msinfo32, i pretty certain that my cards PCI-E.

Thanks for the help,

Pride

[General_J0k3r]

Originally Posted by [R-CON]Pride

Well i opened up the case and discovered that I have a 375W PSU, which is running:

3.2Ghz P4
2048Mb RAM
1 HDD
1 7300 LE
2 CD/DVD Drives


And loking at msinfo32, i pretty certain that my cards PCI-E.

Thanks for the help,

Pride

375W might be a little small if you wanna go for a serious grafix card.

[[R-DEV]Pride]

Yeah, that was what i was thinking too.

Do you reckon it would be able to handle a 8600GTS like Spaceman posted?

After a little research, i came up with this:

We had a total system wattage peak at roughly 233-235 Watts which goes pretty much for any 8600 GTS card, and which is not excessive. We simply place a wattage meter in-between the PSU and power socket. It's not the most objective way to test as you have to consider PSU efficiency as well, but it's the closest thing we can do.

My recommendations:

A single GeForce 8600 GT/GTS requires you to have a 350 Watt power supply unit at minimum if you use it in a high-end system. That power supply needs to have (in total) at least 24 Amps available on the 12 volts rails.

So, according to this, i should be able to just get away with it with 25W to spare (I have a 375W PSU). Should be fine with the Amps too as there is 30A total available on the 12V Rails. What do you think?


Thanks,

/Pride

[[R-DEV]Undies]

I personally would avoid an 8600 series now, not cos they are rubbish, they are very good cards, but with 8800,9600 etc being so rediculously cheap you would be mental not to look around. For the same monay as a 4850 you could get a PSU and a cracking card, and leave more than enough power for the future upgrades you might make. For example...

Hiper 530W HPU-4M530 SLi Certified ATX 2.2 PSU 530W PSU for 40 quid.

PNY GeForce 8800 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail 8800gt for less than 60 quid!!!

OcUK GeForce 9600 GT 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail 9600gt for 70 quid.

Gainward ATI Radeon HD 3870 XT 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail 3870xt for 70 notes.

Obviously just food for thought

[[R-DEV]Pride]

I'd love to Undies, thanks, but unfortunately Dell doesn't want me to do that:

Week of 15 April 2002

And right now, im not really prepared to spend money on a new Motherboard, PSU, Case, GPU and most likely CPU too.


And, as i dont really play anything more modern than PR, i'm thinking the 40 quid 8600GTS Spaceman suggested would be just about what i need.


Cheers for all the help guys,

/Pride