graphics card questions

jeff lebowski

Hi,

I just got broadband so my PC has come to life again and stopped being a black coloured shelf as it was previously.

It's a 2+ year old Dell Dimension 4550 and at the moment has a Gefore 4MX graphics card or something. I'm looking to upgrade my card and al the RAM. The current RAM is 512mb of PC2100.

What I need advice on is, what GFX card could I get that is compatable and also, what RAM? I want to buy another half gig of RAM and I was thinking of a GeForce 6600GT graphics crad. I think this is PCI Express so I don't know if it would work on my PC.

Any advice is appreciated.

Cheers

JackieChan

Jeff,
The best thing to do is get the configuration of your PC.
You can get this from the DELL website.
This should help you with your decisions
JC

jeff lebowski

cheers, I'll try that when I get home from work

mordeith

It's highly unlikely that a PC two years old would have support for a PCI card. The chances are that it will be an AGP aperture and at that probably running at 4X as opposed to 8X. I have a PC of similar age and was plumbing for an ATI 9800 Pro. In the end I got a mid range nVidia 5900 XT, as it was definitely compatible with AGP 4X. Its a decent card and I've played Halo and Half Life 2 on it no problems. I'm not hugely into the benchmarking stuff or fps. Still I don't sufer from stutters or eyestrain so it must be OK. I have 768 MB DDR RAM (PC 3200) and my machine runs really well. I have to say that I also upgraded my PSU (Be-Quiet 450W) and that has had a significant improvement on my machines performance. Don't know if this waffle will help at all but I thought I'd share

po0k

Jeff:

Keep an eye on the For Sale forums or shop around, and look for a Radeon 9800/9800Pro or an nVidia FX5700/5900, or even a GF4 Ti4x00

Also, regarding the ram, open up the case, and describe the layout of the 4 DIMM slots (memory sticks). Are there sticks of ram in slots 0,1 and slots 2,3 are empty? etc.

If you've only got 1x 512Meg stick of PC2100, get a second similar stick (same or lower timings) and put it in the second channel slot.

If you've got 2x 256Meg sticks of PC2100, get another 2x sticks of 256 or 2x 512Meg and put them in.

That way you'll at least double if not triple your ram and you'll take advantage of dual-channel memory performance.

uberpixie

SyxPak wrote:

Jeff:

Keep an eye on the For Sale forums or shop around, and look for a Radeon 9800/9800Pro or an nVidia FX5700/5900, or even a GF4 Ti4x00

Also, regarding the ram, open up the case, and describe the layout of the 4 DIMM slots (memory sticks). Are there sticks of ram in slots 0,1 and slots 2,3 are empty? etc.

If you've only got 1x 512Meg stick of PC2100, get a second similar stick (same or lower timings) and put it in the second channel slot.

If you've got 2x 256Meg sticks of PC2100, get another 2x sticks of 256 or 2x 512Meg and put them in.

That way you'll at least double if not triple your ram and you'll take advantage of dual-channel memory performance.

Dual channel only works if the motherboard supports it....

And i doubt a dell with pc 2100 ram does.

Getting ram on top of a new gfx card is good advice try

Shop4memory.com. They have a product config dealy that will match up compatible ram to your pc.

Another 512mb stick should do the trick and won't break the bank

You can also get a 6600gt in agp flavour
(€179 for a club 3d one off komplett.ie)

2nd hand 9800 pro (€100 ish)

Don't bother with a 5900 series card 2nd hand: They player old stuff well but struggle with any new game with dx9 shaders.

A 9800 pro will have double the frames of a 5900xt in far cry

http://www20.graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/index.html

5900xt will get deacent frames in hl2 because it will run in dx8.1 mode not full dx9.

Also any agp card that does AGP x 8 should do AGP x4 as well.

Furp

I also have a Dell 4550 bought just over two years ago.

I've used www.shop4memory.com to get a 512mb stick of ram before, in my PC it was conifigured with 2x256mb sticks so i took one out and gave it to my sis and added the 512mb of Oz ram.

I've also upgraded my graphics car twice first to a geforce Ti4400 and just last week to a Gigiabyte Geforce 6600GT for just under €200 from www.dabs.com You will probably also need to get an internal power extension cable with a molex connector as Geforce AGp series cards require their own power supply.

I've also added another hardrive. I'm afraid to add any more as the Dell power supply in mine is not very heavy duty, but i don't know how to change it as i believe dell use a propriety connector to the mother board.