Please help me out on a Video Card upgrade for PC!

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02-05-2008, 02:54 PM
slpybear the bullfan

Please help me out on a Video Card upgrade for PC!

Could someone please helpout a guy that knows just enough about PCs to know he is in over his head? :)

I have a Dell Dimension 9100 desktop I purchased back in '05. I am looking to upgrade the video card in it. I would like to max out the PC's Video capabilities for gaming without throwing away money on a card that would be bottlenecked by the other parts of my PC.

Here are the basics of the system...

Pentium 4 Prescott DT 3.0GHz
1.0 Gb DIMM 512
Flat Screen Monitor, 1280x1024 natural resolution

I was looking at the new ATI 3850 or 3870 with 512Mb... but not sure if that makes sense with the older CPU.

Certainly will change power supply and add memory if needed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Feel free to post or PM.
02-05-2008, 03:30 PM
shellman54

First, you need to make sure what type of video card your motherboard will connect to, be it PCI, PCI express, or AGP. If you get the wrong one, it will not connect to your computer.
02-05-2008, 05:38 PM
slpybear the bullfan

Sorry,

PCI Express...

Current video card is an ATI Radeon X600. Has 128Mb on board and steals another 128mb from the PC.
02-05-2008, 05:52 PM
Adidas410s

I'm not a hardware expert...but I would think you would want more than 1GB of RAM to play video games...especially if you're going to move to a higher video card. I'm pretty excited about my new iMac with 4GB of RAM that shipped today! :)
02-05-2008, 06:06 PM
DU_stud04

Quote:

Originally posted by Adidas410s
I'm not a hardware expert...but I would think you would want more than 1GB of RAM to play video games...especially if you're going to move to a higher video card. I'm pretty excited about my new iMac with 4GB of RAM that shipped today! :)

why would you need 4 gigs? planning on doing some video editing?
02-05-2008, 09:24 PM
slpybear the bullfan

any help?
02-05-2008, 09:28 PM
SpeedOption

Not me. I got 2 gigs of RAM Pent2 and Its as slow as honey on a winters day. I have enough problems. I would like a better card with a tv tuner, and a place to hook up my vcr to make dvd's. Ive had NO luck.
02-06-2008, 09:41 AM
shellman54

Sorry about that. For optimum graphics, you want 512 MB RAM, but 256 MB is still good. Look at the BFG GeForce 8600 GT, or ATI-Radeon.
02-06-2008, 10:02 AM
Adidas410s

Quote:

Originally posted by DU_stud04
why would you need 4 gigs? planning on doing some video editing?

I got it because I was able to get a really good $$ on it. I'll be doing photo editing. I was perfectly content with 2 GB's but the price I got 4 GB's for was too good to pass up.