Graphics card and psu help

Hey, i have recently been given a computor that was built by my friend but it has no external graphics card and i dont have that much knowledge of computors but i want it to run guildwars, people on here have been posting for help ive been reading those for ideas but they all say i have psu 400w etc, how do i find that out? all i know is the computor is a socket 478 motherboard and it has 1gb ram lol any advice?

first go to accessories and stsyem tools in your windows menu under it youl find system information thats got a lot of good info about your computer itll tell you what motherboard you got what processor your o.s.how much ram you got then under system info click on the components tag it'll tell you what sound card and video card which is listed under display as for psu i think you got to look on your power supply to get that info usually a little sticker somewhere. seeing someone built it open it up and take a quick peek just try not to touch anything unless your grounded

by giving us the brand name of the computer example dell dimension 6100 a lot of the times we can look up the psu on a website

Ok first off. if your not shure you can run GW go here http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

If you need to know your cpu type and power Download a tool called "Cpuz" it will give you all the info on your cpu and ram.

As for your PSU. crack the side off and look at the sticker to see the max useage .

why would you want an "external" graphic card? graphic cards belong inside the chassis, not outside of it.

i think he wants one that isnt onboard seeing he doesnt have much experience with computers id say if he can give us the specs we could help him out a little

So he's probably running a Pentium 4 or Celeron D then..... chances are he may not even have a PCIex16 slot available - which seriously limits the options.

I have a pentium 4. 2.9Ghz with on board grfx and a PCI-E x16 slot. i use it as my test machine. still fully working after all this time !

Well, you need to find out a few more things - you will need to open the machine up and take a look inside, so you can answer some questions such as

1. What us the power rating (in watts) on the power supply?

2. Does the motherboard have a graphics card slot and is it PCIexpress or AGP

3. What type of RAM does it have (RDRAM, DDR, DDR2)? (This doesn't matter to the graphics card so much, but you could use another gig of RAM to make things run better)

All things considered, this sounds like an older machine. Your best bet, after finding the above info, is probably to check local buy/sell sites, flea markets, etc., for good used parts that will work with it. Depending upon the size/rez of your monitor, and your GW graphics settings, GW should run fine on relatively low-end hardware.

judging that it is a socket 478 motherboard, i'm guessing its AGP. he mentioned that his PSU is a 400W, which does give him a bit more options. a decent upgrade, assuming he can still find it, would be a radeon 9800PRO, or a geforce 6800 XT.

however, i'd personally ditch the system and save up money to build a new one. it's too old, and spending money on it would be a waste.

I believe you can still get an AGP HD3650 online, but I think they run in the $70-80 range which would be a shame to spend that much when the HD4850 can be found for $100 on sale now.

Like Quaker said, we kinda need to know more to really be of much help - you could take of the side of your case and take a couple good pictures and it would help... or better yet download Everest Ultimate (it's free) and then once you have it installed and open click on "Computer" then "Summary" then post the results that appear on your screen. That will provide more than enough information.

Im sorry i was offline for 2 days i had family issues but im back online regularly now, one thing i forgot to mention this was totally built by my friend he bought each part seperatly so i cant give a name of the computor for you to search online, its a small cube shape though but thats no help :P, i did the system information print screen and the results are on the link below, also the computor was rebooted totally a few days ago and some of the drivers have not been updated or put in atm if that matters.
Pictures of the computor and the inside are below as well, but when i read the writting inside it was on the back of one of the fans and the powersupply one said 230v and one said 220v and there was loads of other writting to but most was about the fan ( i didnt know they were ball bearing fans )

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/2559/39884148.jpg

looks like that only has a pci slot not a pci express card slot youll have to find an old card video and that might be hard to do im gonna suggest something along this line its pci and a decent card.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814139046

you might consider a little better psu but im thinking your old might be able to handle it although its specs are a lttle low