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My son plays games on an older system and his video card is sadly outdated.  I'm looking to get him 1GB memory and a better video card so he can play WoW etc without all the lag he's been experiencing.  I have some idea what I'm going to get but thought I'd see what you guys had to add.  I'm leaning toward NVidia since he's not very computer savvy and I've had much better luck avoiding driver conflicts with NVidia over ATI.  Since he doesn't live near me, I'll be buying it on Newegg and shipping it to him. 

Thanks for any input... I'll be on Tom's Hardware checking their video comparisons in the meantime. 

6600 GT or if you want to spend $20 more a 7600 GS.

I know you said $100, but if you spend another $100, you can get him a pretty nice card for the aging AGP slot.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143046 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143046)

Well...

1) I can't afford it nor do I think what he does with the comp demands it.

2) I'm betting he has a 250 W power supply in his Dell meaning that I can't get too fancy with the video card or it will overwork the power supply. 

I'm leaning toward a 6800 or going on the cheap with a 9600 pro. 

250W PSU? That's pretty bad, even for a Dell. Even the cards you mention might be tough to run on that kind of power.

6800 is pretty power hungry. I would try and avoid a Shader 2.0 card like the 9600 Pro and get a Shader 3.0 card at least (NVIDIA 6xxx on up, ATI X1xxx on up).

Just an FYI my 7600 GS wouldn't work on my 350W PSU (but that may also have been because my new dual core CPU is taking more). Had to get a 500W.

I had a whole big thing with Trippy about newer cards and PSU requirements. It's not so much the wattage, but the amount of amps you're getting on your main 12v rails. My old PSU had decent wattage, but simply didn't kick out enough power on the main rails to support newer cards. I cannot imagine being able to run many new items on a 250W PSU.

According to this chart (http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354) the power draw for the 7600 GS is pretty low, lower than the 6600 GT, which might be a bit too power hunger. A 6600 would probably work, though.

I'm not going to go to far down this path because, well, no one cares, but 1 Watt = 1 Volt * 1 Amp.  Saying the wattage doesn't matter it's all about the amperage is kind of, well, clueless.  V = IR, is Ohms law.  The Voltage is proportional to the current times the resistance.

You put more things in the system, you get more resistance, thus you need more current to provide the same amount of voltage at the terminals.  More current, same voltage == more POWER.  The Watt is the measure of power.

It's all about the wattage.

No it's about the Amps/Wattage you can get on the 12V rail which is what the video card is sucking up. In other words just cause you have, say, a 400 Watt power supply doesn't mean you have enough amps on the 12V rail to power a particular video card. That's what Strazos was referring to (when he said "wattage" he meant "total wattage").

OK, I see what you're saying.

I haven't shopped for a new Power Supply or Video Card in a while do they now spec out how many amps they will push n the 12v line?  Do new video cards mention what their max draw is?

Thanks for the info.  I was originally looking at cards with a low amp draw because I feared that this 3-4 year old dell had a pathetic power supply.  I'm guessing that it's of the standard 250-300W variety they were using in the past but can't be 100% sure since the machine is 1000 miles away.  I've tried to get some specs from the Dell website, but that's not been very helpful either. 

Since my son really only plays low rez games, a 9600 may do the trick.  It has a small fan with a low power demand, the card is cheap, and compared to what he has now it will make a world of difference.  He's had some terrible problems running WoW and I told him that rather than buy a new computer that I'd send him a memory and video card upgrade for his computer until he can get some money on his own to come up with the costs to build a new machine.  Considering he's dealing with a GeForce 4 and 256meg memory, a 9600 and 1GB will make a world of a difference for a total outlay of about $150.

Edit: FWIW, I'm not being a cheap bastard here... there are some reasons why I'm not building him a new machine. This was a compromise between us. 

They do if you read the fine print.

They usually just give a recommended power supply wattage. If you search around hard enough you can sometimes find a max power draw.

If he has a GF4 4600 he might not see a big improvement going to the 9600 Pro. Heck I used to play WoW fine (except when I was in Lagforge) on a GeForce4 MX equivalent. The added RAM will make the biggest difference in performance.

Nebu...since your son is going to install the parts himself (I presume), you could have him crack open the case and read the PSU label to see what the stats are.


But yeah, going from 256 RAM to 1GB of RAM = ZOMG LAWL SPEED.

Apropos of nothing...I've heard ATI's new cards will draw 300W compared to about half that on my power-hungry 8800gtx. Next gen Crossfire will take the latter half of the name literally.

I second the 6600GT. I had to get a 400W power supply to make mine work but that is with two ROM drives and 3-4 hard drives.

I'll throw in with the 6600GT as well.  I also had to upgrade my Power Supply, but the card has given my CPU the legs it needs until I can get out of debt and build a whole new one.

Yes and it's also so large it comes with its own ZIP code. But seriously, the top-of-the-line version of the R600 (http://vr-zone.com/?i=4622) is so long it doesn't fit in normal ATX cases.