Upgrade question re Video Card and power supply
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 - 5:37pm
I am trying to extend the life of my Dell Dimension 8300. It already has 1.5 gb ram and an extra hard disk. Now, I'm considering changing the standard ATI Raden 9800 (128mb) card for a faster card:
(SAPPHIRE 100198L Radeon X1650 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X Video Card - $69.99 at newegg.com)
Is this going to over tax my power supply?
Is it time to give up on this 4.5 year old beast?
The answer for most people would probably be yes but I have a new baby due in less than a month so my game playing is not going to be a lot in the next six months. I just want to extend the life of my rig another year or so.
Comments?
-Jayavarman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayavarman_VII
Try this link: http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
It should help give you an idea of what your power supply can handle.
"Sometimes a man needs to temporarily stop rocking and consider what, exactly, the chicks are going to dig." - Podunk
Here is a link I found very handy in choosing a new video card:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/131
It's a breakdown of the general specs of all ATI cards. About two years ago I upgraded to the x1650 and was not at all impressed with the performance change. Yes, it has a ton of RAM but its not that much faster.
"History is'a made at night! Character is what you are in the dark!" - Lord John Whorfin
What did you upgrade from? According to the ATI upgrade page( http://ati.amd.com/upgradeadvisor/index.html ), it may be the fastest ATI board my machine can handle and I'd rathter not buy a new rig right now. Another GWJer (rainsmercy: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/35689 ) evidently performed a similar upgrade recently but has yet to respond to my querry as to how it worked out for him.
-Jayavarman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayavarman_VII