Video Card Upgrade

[sprky5]

Hello

I have an older P.C. and I would like to upgrade the video card. I currently have an ATI RADEON X300 SE PCI-E graphics card with 128mb of DDR memory. I am running windows XP with 1GB of DDR SDRAM memory. What should I look for in a new card?

Thanks

[jbennet]

How powerful is your power supply in watts?
How many amps does its +12v rail(s) supply?
What cables does it have?

You will need to physically look at the label to get this info. Post it here and ill tell you if youll need an upgrade and which cards you can run with or without a psu upgrade

How big is your case too?
Can it accomodate dual-slot cards? long cards?

[Suspishio]

You might also consider this and let us know:
1/
What do you want the video card to do better than it does now? Which application(s)?

2/
What makes you think that an improved video card is the solution to the proble I hope you'll describe in response to my Q1? You might be memory limited or CPU limited.

3/
What is the older PC spec please? If you ant to run the latest games, for instance, a better graphics card in a higher spec'd PC might be the only route to acceptable performance.

It all hinges on what you want to achieve and why. Then jbennet's advice can be giben and judged in its proper context.

[sprky5]

How powerful is your power supply in watts?
How many amps does its +12v rail(s) supply?
What cables does it have?

You will need to physically look at the label to get this info. Post it here and ill tell you if youll need an upgrade and which cards you can run with or without a psu upgrade

How big is your case too?
Can it accomodate dual-slot cards? long cards?

Hello
The power supply watts is 300
The +12v rail amps are 19
The case is 14 1/2" w x 15" h x 7 1/2" d
MY son thinks that upgrading the video card's memory will alow him to play the latest games.

Thanks

[jbennet]

you will need a power supply upgrade to power a new card, the current one would be very insufficient

[Suspishio]

IMHO, upgrading the video memory will help with older games. The latest games need the latest cards and high spec PCs.

If you do intend staying with your existing PC, then adding a video card with as much memory piled on as possible would provide the best results. There is a cut-off point if you've got an older PC where the trade-off isn't favourable between your CPU power and that of the graphics card; in other words, say 512MB of video memory won't be serviced at a rate to satisfy gaming expectations.

So I would look for a 256MB card such as the GEForce 6600GT (PCI-E); they're still around. The latest cards are just unable to be properly serviced by your PC. You would require a 450W power supply for this card.

As to whether there is a Radeon card you should be considering - just look at the forum(s) and see which card brand gives users the greatest amount of gyp, often because of blue-screening due to PC resident software and drivers.

Hope this helps.