I have two Asus GeForce Extreme N6600GT cards leftover from when I ran them in SLI mode on my previous motherboard (which my sister is now using with her EVGA GeForce 7900 GS card). Both cards have been fitted with Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 6 VGA coolers. One works, but the other is overheating probably due to a failure of the thermal grease on the heatsink base which I never got around to redoing because I'm lazy. I would give you the good card, but UPS shipping to Belgium or the Netherlands is about 60€. However, I am afraid that a 6600 GT-class card would overtax the 305W PSU on the Dimension 5100.

A possible VGA upgrade for the 5100 includes the ATI Radeon X800 and X800 GT and the Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS and 7600 GT. Of these, the 7600 GS is the least stressful to the PSU and gives good performance, better than the 6600 GT or X1600 Pro and much better than the X600 XL. Newegg.com has the EVGA GeForce 7600 GS on sale for $64.99 (47.5€) after rebate.

I do not recommend any kind of overclocking.

EVGA's power supply requirements for the GeForce 7600 GS:
Is not the +12V rail on the Dimension 5100's PSU rated at a maximum 19A?

Some discussions concerning Dell's 305W PSU here and here. The techspot.com thread is discussing the GeForce 7600 GT, but that would still be relevant.

Thanks a lot for the offer for the card, but as you say the PSU may be an issue and shipping costs as much as the card itself second hand overhere, so I'll look for an alternative.

Question on the "x" series. Is x600 worse than 800 worse than 1300 worse than 1600? (ignoring pro, gt etc variants). Because benchmarking showed that even an x1300 would not perform on the level of the good old radeon9800pro.

I wouldn't go into overclocking things indeed, the goodie needs to work fine as is.

The power rating of the 7600Gs appears to be the same as the 7600GT. That card is for sale for 75€ second hand quite a lot here. Still quite some money if you hadn't intended to spend any of course...

We'll have to see.

It will be quiet from my side for some time, holidays coming up.

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No. The 9800pro is a decent card, but it's not that good by any stretch.

Keep firmly in mind that the only really good comparative benchmark is one done by (otherwise) identical machines with clean installs and no extrenious software. The slower benchmark you've experienced with the x600 may well have nothing at all to do with the card itself.

The 1300 is significantly better than the 800, and the 800 is significantly (and demonstrably) faster than the radeons. I can say that for certain. I'm not familiar enough with the 1600 to make judgments there, but nothing I've heard suggests it's a nerfed card.

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Given the identical hardware and identical cpu score, plus the fact that the pc with the x600 (note that this is a variant with ypermemory, so a poor variant) is far more clean than the one with the 9800pro, the 9800pro really is at least that much better than the x600 (1500 vs 3100 gpu score). So about the x600 I have reasonable certainty.

How come the X1300 (pro) gets lower 3dmark05 and halflife2 scores than the 9800pro on my PC when the X1300 is tested with otherwise better PC's (faster cpu, at least as much ram) and identical benchmark settings? I've yet to see an X1300pro getting a higher gpu score in 3dmark05 than my radeon9800pro in any test. It consistently settles in the 2800 region while I hit 3128.

I am more than willing to believe that the X1300 pro is better than the old 9800pro, but all reported performance data seems to point out it isn't the case.

I'm still not clear on the X series numbers. The X700 outperforms the X1300pro, and I've never seen 3dmark05 tests where the x1300 pro outperformed the x800...

Geforce 6600GT and X700 appear to outperform the radeon9800pro, though for the X700 pro not in all tests.


The X800XL very clearly outperforms the 9800pro, with a score in the 4700 region and above. So apparently at least some variants of the X800 are way, way better than the X1300?

Summarized, what I found:

X700 and X800 are better than X1300pro, X700 is about equal to radeon9800pro, X800 is clearly better. X1300pro is worse than all these, X600 is just crap .
So I agree with you on the 800, but not on the 1300. Other BB's also claim the 1300 is related to the 600, while the 800 (and especially the XL) is a way more capable card.

I can buy X800's (X800, X800 pro) for about 50€, so that appears to be a possible solution.

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I think the trouble with the discrepancies you are seeing when comparing other benchmarks against yours is that to some extent you are comparing apples to oranges. The benchmarks you see online/in magazines etc will have been done on the same or identical pc's in every important aspect so as to give an accurate comparison between cards. Your pc configuration will obviously be different.

If you haven't already seen it, you might find this comparison chart sorted by performance somewhat useful:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/...ney/page7.html

As you can see it ranks the X600 series just below the 9800 PRO, which seems to match your benchmark results (it's the last page of 7 btw).

Last xmas I had to replace my faulty 9600 in a hurry, ended up getting the X1600 PRO, which I've been very happy with so far ie I did notice improvements, but you may want to aim a bit higher.

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N6MAA10816
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Thanks for the link. Taking into account that I have the 256bit 9800pro, it is clear that the X1300 pro will not be better, and I'd need at least an X800 or X700 variant (though the X700 is doubtful)). Of course there's a lot of difference between an X800 pro and X800XL, but both are faster than the 9800pro. (4000-6000 3dmark05score vs 3000)

My feeling is that they even overestimated the regular x600 a bit in that comparison.

Anyway, I think looking into an X800 solution might be worthwile. The 305W PSU should be ok, the PC doesn't get too much other loads and its 12V bus can deliver the requested current. The XL variant is a bit expensive (second hand), the pro is OK. I've also seen just "X800", found no info on that. I don't know where the "GT" variant is situated in the X800 range. Or the "rx". X800 pro should be fast enough, I don't plan to buy loads of new games and the radeon was ok for my current ones (except HL2: lost coast maybe, but that's just a demo anyway)

I don't own shader model 3 games and SM3 and 2 compatible cards seem to be expensive, so SM2 will do.

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I have (most likely) some financial luck, so I'm able to buy a new card. I went to some shops.

Ati radeon X1650pro 512mb 2xdvi seems nice. Shader model 3 too. I find 3dmark05 results in the 6000 region. That would make it a lot faster than the radeon9800pro. Likely or doubts?

It's 89€ and available at cycle distance so that's nice.

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Sounds good. I went for the X1600pro 512mb for the fact that it was one of the better AGP cards going for the price at the time (not having a PCI express M/B). Of course they then went on surprisingly to release some of the higher cards as AGP.... grrr
Anyway, I've found it runs Unreal Tournament 2004 & Half Life 2 on the highest settings I like so was very happy and I'm sure the 1650 will be even better. Oh & because I had a previous Radeon, when I plugged it in it used the old drivers
& set my desktop at too higher a resolution! (not lower has had been the case before)

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N6MAA10816
Faber '62 ΔTX
Are you a Bright?

I've bought the Sapphire HD 2600 Pro 512MB double DVI. It's the successor to the X1650 pro. Should be more than sufficient.

In the system requirements, it says 400W PSU. That seems a bit much to me; I doubt you really need a 400W PSU for this card during average use. Maybe when doing a benchmark and loading things 100% you get advantage from a heavier PSU to get the highest score, but other than that it appears to me 400 is overkill.

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I just read on the dell forums about someone powering a 8800 card which requires at least 450W with his standard 305W PSU (the same one I've got). The Dell PSU is massively underrated, and even with its low rated amps (but high actual amps) it can power many cards and remain stable. On top of that, videocard PSU requirements appear to be overrated, so add the two and it will probably go just fine.

And a 2600 is certainly faster than a 9800pro . It'd better be for 100€...

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A minimum PSU requirement of 400W is quite reasonable. I would not build a PC today with anything less than a quality 350W PSU.

It's all about maintaining stability under load. The stronger the PSU, the more likely it will provide clean, stable power for a PC performing demanding tasks, such as running benchmarking programs, 3D video games, or CPU-intensive applications running for many hours, such as Folding@Home and Prime95. And a PSU is more likely to enjoy a longer life if it is not being frequently pushed to its limits.

Is that the 8800 GTS? The 8800 GTX/Ultra is a big power sucker. I have read that the 8800 GTS requires a PSU with a +12V rating of 26A, which is quite a bit higher than what the 305W PSU in the Dimension 5100 can deliver.

The 305W (mean) PSU can deliver 22amps on its +12 according to the box IIRC, but that is also underrated.

Anyway, it was an 8800 GTS which ran, but when they replaced the PSU they got a higher FPS so the 8800 GTS was too much for the 305W mean PSU.

But there are lots of people using 8600's, 7950's etc just fine with the PSU, so I assume a 2600 will also work fine.

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Posted an entry to this thread yesterday while still feverish -- much better now.

Nicolas, you might want to check your PSU in your Dimension 5100. If it is the Model: H305P-00 VER: A02 P/N: HP-P3067F3P, then it has a +12V rating of 18A. The +5V is rated at 22A on this PSU.

18A, if continuous, on the +12V rail is actually very good for a 300W-class PSU. It may power the Sapphire HD 2600 Pro 512MB, but for how well and for how long, I can't say.

Yes, it's probably 18A indeed, the 22A I read was the +5. My mistake.

What do you mean with "for how long"? Do you fear the PSU or card might fail in this combination or did you mean something else?

Knowing how they determine the specs of this PSU, that 18A is continuous. Because for some reason, Dell is about the only one to specify PSU's at mean level instead of max. That's why this 305W PSU can be compared to good 350W+ models of other brands. btw under the cover, this dell PSU is a rebadge of a PSU made by one of the top players in the market.

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I'm pretty sure you won't damage hardware*, but if the power is insufficient, you are likely to experience instability while gaming.

(*When I last upgraded, I shelled a bit extra for a 500W silent PSU rather than the 400W silent PSU of the same line. I have never been willing to skimp on juice for my gaming boxen, so take that opinion with the hefty box of salt it needs.)

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Ok, like that.

Given a 250W dell PSU powers a 9800pro just fine (as long as you don't overclock) without even a single graphics glitch, I have good hopes the vastly improved 305W will do a good job on the not too heavy 2600 pro.

(on a sidenote, I think the notorious dimension 4600 250W PSU has had it best time and is causing lockups during boot sometimes)

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The problem is that the newer cards require far more power than the older ones.

So, if you're doing a lot of gaming (or anything else that'll use the CPU and GPU intensively) then you will almost certainly end up with a problem.

I also don't think that hardware will be damaged (Even if the fans should fail pretty much every piece of hardware is designed to just turn off if it gets too hot.)

The good news is that power supplies are dirt cheap, and upgrading should cost essentially nothing.

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