upgrading psu for new graphics card

stephenmarr

Hi ive a
Dell Dimension 5150
pentium 4 CPU 3.20Ghz 2GB Ram
7600gt grpahics card

thinking of changing the card to an x1950pro what psu should i get as the one in my pc is a 305w psu.
ive heard that Dell psu's are not standard sizes

also is this card a good buy i like to play games with everything on full my monitor will only go as far as 1280x1024

Will be selling the 7600gt if it all works out

8T8

According to this off the shelf PSU's will fit but the screw hole will not line up so some cutting may be required.

As for the type of PSU well a quality one like a Seasonic M12 will set you back over a €100, there are cheaper alternatives that will suffice and power the card though.

As for the X1950Pro well getting that will for the most part allow AA/AF to be used in more games but that's about it really. If the 7600GT is already doing it's job fine then it may not be worth upgrading it.

stephenmarr

i got Never winter nights 2 and on 1280x1024 res and on medium settings it slows down when there is alot of activity on screen also hitman bloodmoney is the same
just like being able to whack up the detail without slowdown.

christophicus

Man I would have thought that taht card could easily handle Hitman.

Are you shure your card is ok?

stephenmarr

as far as i know its ok running forceware 93.81 drivers. if i turn detail up to max it seems to get jerky in the game asfor nwn2 when loads of spells are cast it slows down quite badly

duridian

Don't forget the midrange Nvidia 8600 cards should be appearing in another 5-6 weeks. Don't know the exact power requirements in watts but I wouldn't expect it to be much higher to that of the 7600GT. It's expected that these cards could perform like a 7900GT but with DX10 support like the 8800GTX/GTS. You might get away with a 8600GT without changing the psu if the 7600GT was ok.
I had a look at the service manual of the 5150 and TBH it does look like a regular psu will work judging by where the screw holes are located in the diagrams. I reckon in that link above they must have the power supply upside down or something.
See what you think yourself.

8T8

Well Neverwinter nights 2 is known to perform very poorly I don't have it so cannot suggest anything but I thought I heard it is the shadows in game that are part of the slow down so try turning those off, also make sure v-sync is disabled.

Of course be sure to be using the latest version of the game as well.

As for Hitman Blood Money not sure what's up with that as it ran fairly well out of the box though all the details enabled plus AA is probably pushing the limit of the card if you turn off AA it may run better.

stephenmarr

cheers guys the bro had a spare psu so will see if it fits and then will purchase

christophicus

8T8 wrote:

Well Neverwinter nights 2 is known to perform very poorly I don't have it so cannot suggest anything but I thought I heard it is the shadows in game that are part of the slow down so try turning those off, also make sure v-sync is disabled.

Of course be sure to be using the latest version of the game as well.

As for Hitman Blood Money not sure what's up with that as it ran fairly well out of the box though all the details enabled plus AA is probably pushing the limit of the card if you turn off AA it may run better.

Ive been meaning too ask actually , What does V-sync actually do?

stephenmarr

I just ran a 3d benchmark test i got a score of

3014

is that any good?

christophicus

LOl that kinda depends on what 3d benchmark you were running:)

stephenmarr

3dmark 06 version 1.1.0 downloaded it just tonight.

christophicus

Isnt there some sort of table you can look at to see other peoples systems and what GPU's they are using?

christophicus

Well if you look here you see the average score is 3300, so as you can see your score is a tad lower. I would say that that has to do with the rest of your computer moreso then the card you have. This is just a guess though, I may ver well be wrong.

http://xtreview.com/review63.htm

TerrorFirmer

It's funny, I used to have a Pentium 4 3.4Ghz, 1.5Gb Ram, 7600GT - and regardless of how many times I ran the test, I kept getting 1k something - and people with similar or slightly worse machines were getting way more! Hardware wise, there was nothing wrong with it - all my games were running fine on max settings. It just though, was so bloody annoying...

Anyway, sorry, my point - don't rely too much on 3dmark scores.

christophicus

Yeah but his score is quite close to the average , so I doubt its something wrong with the test in his case.

TerrorFirmer

No, it looks totally normal - I was just using my case to show that you can't be depending solely on a 3dmark score to assess your system.

Regarding my test, a Opteron Machine with 768mb of Ram was outperforming mine 3dmark wise - although in real term gaming, that wouldn't be possible...just an example of misleading info.

christophicus

Yeah I know what you mean.

stephenmarr

just did it again got a score of 3152

TerrorFirmer

You aren't still using that machine in your sig there....are you??

I remember when you were looking for a card to play BF1942 and CS....did you ever get one?

christophicus

Cheers for the interest Havok I appreciate it .

No I didnt get a card for it.
No Im not using the PC in my sig anymore. I got a lend of a

Athlon 64 3200 @2Ghz
1GB ram
radeon 9600.
240 GB HDD

Off of my brother, he's gone traveling so I have the PC till he gets back .
I can Actually play BF2142!!lol

The only problem is I am doing my LC this year and havent started studying yet, ive been on teh pc the whole tim!! IM so screwed!!:(

TerrorFirmer

With an 800Mhz I can only begin to imagine the horror that was the accompanying onboard graphics.

I have a few crappy agp cards lying around here but one of them was a Geforce 2 32mb, I thought if you still needed one it'd be as good a time to offer as any, hardly a ground breaking card but not only does it run BF1942 and CS pretty well, I can get CS Source and Half Life 2 to run! :eek:

edit: don't worry about exams I have college exams in a months time and I've yet to attend any real lectures let alone open a page

christophicus

LOl , At least you managed to GET INTO college though .

Thanks for the offer , but the P£ doesnt have an AGP slot. otherwise I would take the card. thanks anyway.:)

8T8

christophicus wrote:

Ive been meaning too ask actually , What does V-sync actually do?

Wiki link on v-sync

Explains it well enough, generally I can live without v-sync enabled running on LCD's though some can't. In some cases your not even given an option like some Xbox 360 games I've played.

hamster

Ha Ha! Good to see you guys talking about the 5150 Dell again. If I remember stephenmarr we were talking about this exactly a year ago? I bought the dell and stuck the 7600gt in there while using the standard dell psu. It's been stable since I got it. The same 1Gb memory and 160Gb drive and a basic SB-Value soundcard are in there.
I must admit I am looking out for a psu solution - so if it works let me know! It would be nice to add another 1Gb stick of ram with confidence of knowing that I haven't finally breached Dell's stock psu limit. The Cpu's a D 820 so it's a fairly energy inefficient like it's P4 cousin if worse. May just use it for another year and get a mature conroe with 4Gb for a vista install (god help us!)

TerrorFirmer

hamster wrote:

Ha Ha! Good to see you guys talking about the 5150 Dell again. If I remember stephenmarr we were talking about this exactly a year ago? I bought the dell and stuck the 7600gt in there while using the standard dell psu. It's been stable since I got it. The same 1Gb memory and 160Gb drive and a basic SB-Value soundcard are in there.
I must admit I am looking out for a psu solution - so if it works let me know! It would be nice to add another 1Gb stick of ram with confidence of knowing that I haven't finally breached Dell's stock psu limit. The Cpu's a D 820 so it's a fairly energy inefficient like it's P4 cousin if worse. May just use it for another year and get a mature conroe with 4Gb for a vista install (god help us!)

Adding more ram wouldn't really stress any psu nor would a 7600GT - I don't think you have anything to worry about there with the 5150 305w psu. I'm stringing along 2 sticks of ram, a 7600gs and a few pci cards on a 200w psu of a make I've never heard of (FSP?) - so far, so good.

hamster

HavoK wrote:

Adding more ram wouldn't really stress any psu nor would a 7600GT - I don't think you have anything to worry about there with the 5150 305w psu. I'm stringing along 2 sticks of ram, a 7600gs and a few pci cards on a 200w psu of a make I've never heard of (FSP?) - so far, so good.

I may stick in another stick of 1Gb next to extend the life of the machine and get a decent laptop next year - current one is 4 years - an aging 384Mb Inspiron 2650 1.8Gb P4 1024x768 display - still good as a retro machine - only snag - it sounds like a background hoover when she heats up after 10mins of 50%+ cpu. The newer ones are much quieter.
Yeah, I'm happy with my own 7600gt - isn't doing too bad at all. I used it for Half Life 2 (great ending) and Oblivion (halted since Aug '06 since last year) and it did well. Simcity 4 was a big test at 1280x1024 (my native lcd res) and the 7600gt had to work hard with a busy city.
Good to hear that yer 5150's are holding up well! Any of you using the latest set of nvidia video drivers (xp not vista)? I'm in ubuntu just right now - so I can't tell what window version I'm using.... but I haven't had many problems with drivers at least 8 months old.

christophicus

HavoK wrote:

Adding more ram wouldn't really stress any psu nor would a 7600GT - I don't think you have anything to worry about there with the 5150 305w psu. I'm stringing along 2 sticks of ram, a 7600gs and a few pci cards on a 200w psu of a make I've never heard of (FSP?) - so far, so good.

Fsp are a very good make indeed. Their PSU's are some of teh most efficient out their and they used to be the only poeple to rely on to make a passively cooled PSU that actually gave out its rated voltages stabley. They are one of the best PSU manufaturers araound:)

stephenmarr

ive stuck in another 2 512 sticks of ram and no problems at all also ive a sound blaster card also and no hassle just thinking of upgrading the graphics card to something more powerful will let yea know as sonn as i put it in.