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Suggestions for Upgrading the Video Card in my brother's Dell, please

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hydrata

Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2001
Location
Birmingham, AL
Hey guys,

My brother has a Dell Inspiron 531 (AMD 64 X2 4000+, 2GB RAM, yadda yadda) and is currently using the onboard video, which is a nVidia GeForce 6150. Well, obviously the onboard video sucks.
For his birthday I pre-orderd Starcraft II for him. He's playing the Beta and has to run it in windowed mode and the gameplay is still VERY choppy.
I'm thinking the culprit is most likely the onboard video, so we would like to upgrade this. He has a budget of around $50-$100. The Dell does have a PCI-e x16 slot, and the Dell website even recommends a Radeon 2600XT for a video upgrade. As far as I can tell though, the Radeon2600XT does not require an extra plug from the power supply, nor would my brother's current power supply likely support it.
So, could someone please recommend some video cards on the lower end (50-100 dollars) that could serve as a nice upgrade? I don't really keep up with the lower end of the graphics market, so any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you.
 
A Radeon 5670 would fit the bill nicely. Pretty fast, low power draw. There's also the GT240 from Nvidia, but it lacks the same "bang for buck" that the ATi cards have.
 
Thank you for the reply. The 512MB version looks like it could do just nicely, and it's DX11. It's probably more than my brother would know to do with! Haha.
My concern is if the power supply can handle it. I haven't had a chance to drop by my parents house and see what kinda power supply he has, and from what I can tell the Dell he has comes with power supplies ranging between 300-400 watts. Any idea if the PS can handle it?
 
Thank you for the reply. The 512MB version looks like it could do just nicely, and it's DX11. It's probably more than my brother would know to do with! Haha.
My concern is if the power supply can handle it. I haven't had a chance to drop by my parents house and see what kinda power supply he has, and from what I can tell the Dell he has comes with power supplies ranging between 300-400 watts. Any idea if the PS can handle it?
 
The PSU will likely be 300 watts, Can it handle the 5670, Probably, His system isn't much of a power hog and the video card doesn't take much juice so I think you will be ok. Of course the quality of the PSU always plays a part as well.
 
The 5670 is specced to draw a maximum of around 60W. Since there aren't a bunch of hard drives, and the system isn't overclocked or anything, there's plenty of headroom there.
 
Thanks for the info. My brother is a little more cash strapped than he admitted and only has 60 dollars. I'll just either make him wait til prices drop or spot him an extra 10 dollars or so.
Again, thank you very much for the info and suggestions.
 
The 531 has a 305 watt PSU. I know my Dell 305 won't run a Geforce 7600 GT. You might want to upgrade the PSU, The Inspiron's use a standard ATX PSU as long as it's not the narrow case.
 
I just upgraded the video card in my XPS 400 using an MSI 8600GT. Runs great with zero issues as the video card requires no power input.
 
I know my Dell 305 won't run a Geforce 7600 GT.

The power supply probably isn't the problem there, unless your unit is faulty. FWIW, I have a Dell 250W PSU in my sig machine (from a GX270)... it's happily running an 8600GTS, and that card even requires external power.
 
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