Please help me choose a video card

[LicoriceTattoo]

Hello!

I have an Inspiron 531 and recently my video card went bad so I need a new one. In the meantime I've switched to onboard. I'm a software guy and am a big dummy on hardware so can you please help me? I just need a cheap one that will get me by.

1. I don't do gaming
2. My budget is as cheap as I can get. Under 30-40 would be nice.
3. My power supply says "Bestec" on it and says +12V/18A, -12V/.8A
4. Specs from "CPU-Z"
a.CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
b.Mainboard: Dell Inc 0RY206, Chipset: NVIDIA MCP61
c. Memory: DDR2, 3072 MBytes

Here are the specs that came with my computer when I bought it (HOWEVER, I had to replace the NVIDIA with another video card cuz the NVIDIA caused problems, but I made a stupid decision and threw away the card I replaced it with when it went bad)

Dell Inspiron 531 AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 6000+
Memory 3GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 4 DIMMs
Video Cards 128MB Radeon ATI HD 2400 PRO
Hard Drive 500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™

Please let me know what my cheapest bet would be so I can get off the onboard! Thanks!!!!!!

Thanks,
Steve

 

[BigTerminator]

Get an AMD 6450, it is DX 11, has all the tech you need and will play movies. Can do light gaming, definitely better than on board. That would be your best bet for around $45.

 

[LicoriceTattoo]

BT,

Thanks! Pardon my ignorance, but AMD 6450 doesn't bring up anything at newegg.com. Would any Radeon HD 6450 work for me? Like these?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...Radeon HD 6000 series&Order=PRICE&Pagesize=20

Thanks,
Steve

 

[BigTerminator]

AMD makes the Radeon HD 6450 GPU. All those card are using the same GPU. They may have different coolers, maybe more or less RAM but they all are essentially the same. If I were you I would get that Power Color because it has more Video RAM, higher memory bit interface and with rebate it's $30.

 

[LicoriceTattoo]

Ordered! Thanks so much for the help.

Steve

 

[LicoriceTattoo]

One follow-up question if you don't mind. That card is PCI express 2.1. The 2.1 won't be too high of a version for my motherboard, right? Hope not, since it's already ordered

Thanks
Steve

 

[BigTerminator]

PCI Express 2.1 will work with 2.0, 1.0 or even if your board was 3.0 They are all cross compatible.

 

[LicoriceTattoo]

BT,

You da man! Video card came today. I installed it and it's working great. One thing concerns me that I hope you can put to rest though. There was a plug on the card itself that I expected to find a little connector coming from my power supply that I could put in there. But no such plug existed. So i seated it in the slot, with no power supply cord connecting it, and fired it up. Everything is working great. But is it OK that I don't have it connected to my power supply? Of course I don't remember if my power supply was connected to my previous card

Thanks again for all your help
Steve

 

[BigTerminator]

Thank you very much and i'm glad everything is working great!

About the power. PCI Express will supply up to 75 watts of electricity from the slot alone. The power is coming from the 24pin Motherboard power connector. The card is energy efficient enough and of such low wattage that it doesn't need another power connector as say my graphics card.

Make sure to get the latest drivers from AMD's website and not the driver disc