Graphic Card Grief xD

Hey,

I bought this pc about a year ago (some form of Dell Dimension 5150), and back then i knew nothing much about pc's except big numbers tend to be good.

However i now know a bit about them, still not much, and have decided to up my graphics card since it is unable to run most modern games. This was fine but i want to broaden my horizons beyond GW and BF2.

It is currently a 256mb ATI Radeon X600, i'm looking to spend about £100 on a new card, and could probably stretch to about £150 if its really worth the extra money.

I've been recommended the 8600 GT or GTS (256mb), not sure what the difference is? Anyway, a local store has them for £90, are they a good option/good product?

Thanks in advance

some form of the 5150 could mean you have a pci, agp, or pcie slot. Can we get an exact model number?

Also, don't buy the 8600GTS it has poor performance. If you plan on buying a 8600GTS, you'd better get a dx9 card from the latest generation, you'll get more performance for the same amount of money.

EDIT: better check if you have a PCI-E or AGP slot before buying the card.

could you give some examples if at all possible? i'm hopeless at this lol.

btw afraid all i can find so far is dimension 5150 and dell dm051 as far as model numbers go which i don't think is of much use.

i'll open it up and try to figure out which kind of slot its got.

EDIT: ive opened it up and from my limited knowledge it looks like a pci-express slot, i took a (blurry, sorry) picture of it at the welcome chance you guys think i'm wrong:



the slot is about 9ish cm long, and split into a small slot (say 1.5cm) and a much larger slot (say 7.5cm)

any of this sound right?

oh and btw i'm running xp with no current look to upgrade to vista, the rest of the system is:

Pentium Dual Core 2.8ghz
2gb RAM
and whatnot, currently got dx9c installed

It appears to be a PCIE card. When you have decided on a new graphics card check it's recommended power demands, as you may have to upgrade your power supply unit as well.

He's right, it's very likely you'll have to change your power supply. You probably have a 300W or 350W power supply in your computer and it just won't cope with the power demands of your video card.

If you have a PCI-E slot and suitable PSU already, and can stretch a little further then i'd recommend the new 8800GT 512Mb. It's an excellent card. Costs about £160 and has around 80-90% of the performance of its big brother the GTX, which is twice the price. It's also relatively future proof with it being DX10 and will run anything currently out at high specs.