I'm thinking of getting this video card http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3048552&Sku=P450-8650 The only reason I haven't yet is I have a Dell Vostro 200 SLIM. Will this card fit in my tower or will I have to find some other card? Thanks
Because you have the SLIM version of the Vostro 200 and not the MINI version, your system can only take half-height graphics cards, and so won't be able to take the 8600GT just posted. It does, however, have a PCI Express 16x slot for use with a normal graphics card. The downside, of course is that it will havea very weak power supply, so you will not be able to get a very powerful graphics card. There are also very few low profile graphics cards made that are any good. The best I could offer you would be something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161078 It would be leagues ahead of any integrated graphics solution, but it's not exactly high end. If you want to play high end recent games, you'll need to think of abandoning the Vostro Slim.
Id go with the new 8800GT but the new 256Mb one its $200, but as for the case being narrow, they make riser cards that will direct 90* down, but youll have to hack away at your expansion panel because your case isnt deigned for it. How good is this vostro, either put it in a full size mid tower, or build a new tower.
An 8800GT would be out of the range of the power supply in the Vostro, and since they're usually custom fit jobs, is out of the question entirely.
=/ Thanks a lot for all you help. Saved me a lot of money. Guess I won't be playing Crysis for a long time lol
@sammorris check my sig for my spec...if i buy a HD3870 or HD3850...will it be able to run it...hmm...i think it probably would nut risky since i have a cheap psu...
AOpen brand PSUs are among the worst brands of all and are renowned for bursting into flames. Under NO circumstances should you upgrade ANYTHING in your PC until you've got a decent power supply. In any case, I'd recommend a CPU upgrade as well if you're going with an 8800GT, a single core CPU like yours won't be able to keep up with most games the 8800GT runs well.
Wait one more question sammorris... If I buy that card you posted a link to earlier, do you think I will be able to play Crysis or any other games? My computer has 1.5 gigs of RAM and its running vista. If not, is there any other card you can recommend to me? Thanks for all you help
The x1550? Oh hell no. And you should upgrade to 2GB of ram for playing newer games since you have vista. Vista is a real ram hog.
Ok. I was planning on upgrading my computer to having 4GB of RAM and buying the x1550 card. Would that be good to play games and especially Crysis? Thanks
Unfortunately no. Because of the size of the system, there is no graphics card that exists that could play Crysis at all well. It might run, but it'd run very poorly. Powerful graphics cards are always full size, there are no half-height equivalents of anything powerful enough to run Crysis. If you want to play Crysis, you'll need to ditch the Vostro and get a new PC.
Let's be pedantic here and say "half the size of a normal one" they look like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161078
