Video/graphics card

Fallout 3 doesnt deen an expensive graphics card to run, its a 2 year old game which will run on a cheap card like a Radeon 4650 or an NVidia 9600 GT. Please post your system specs and I can advise what is the best course of action  

Depending on your power supply a HD 4850 will run the game quite well if don't have a good power supply get a HD4670 should run the game just fine. This is assuming you have a PCI express slot

how do I find out my power supply? Is there a way to do it without taking the tower apart?

I have a emachine with windows xp 2002 version. Has celeron 3.33 GHz processor and a ATI Radeon xpress 200 video card..says PCI Express slot available for upgrade..If you need more info let me know

power supply is (i think) 1.212 core voltage

You should take the side of the machine and take a peek! It will likely give info on the side of the PSU as to how many watts it can supply and how many volts there are on the 3, 5 and 12 volt rails. This is the info we need to figure out if your existing PSU is capable of powering a newer graphics card.

The Radeon 200 series chipset is likely built in to your motherboard. If there is a free PCI Express slot then this is very promising. You could buy a Radeon 4650 card, which are passive cards (do not require any power other than the 75 watts supplies through the PCI Express slot itself) for not very much money. I put one in a work computer about 3 weeks ago and it cost only £30 GBP = $45 USD.

Taking the side off the machine is nothing to be scared of. Ususally just remove 2 screws and BAM your in there.

If you dont want to do that then please post the exact model of PC that you have. You need to be a bit more specific than emachines, 3.33 GHz CPU, Windows 2002.

Not enough info I'm afraid. If you said it was an emachines EM00783XYZ for example, than we would be able (hopefully) to google that and get your exact specs.....

What is the exact model of your e-machine?

Also what resolution will you be playing at?


Most brand name PC boxes come with weak power supplies with the exception of the high end models. At this point in time without any further info my recommendation would be either the HD 5570 or the HD 5670. I'm leaning more towards the HD 5570 because it uses less power.

The HD 5570 is roughly as powerful as the older HD 4670 and should do well with Fallout 3 up to 1680 x 1050. However, your CPU is rather slow compared to modern CPUs and will limit your gaming performance a bit.

+1 to that ^^

the 5### cards might cost a little more than the 4### but they support DirectX11 (Yay!)

The motherboard is manufactured by Intel Corporation
Model D101GGC AAD54032-300
Chipset ATI RS400/RC400/RC400
Southbridge ATI SB400
LPCIO SMSC DME 1737

BIOS
version: GC 11010M.15A.0009.2006.0420.1045
GPU Name: ATI Radeon Xpress Series 200
says PCI Xpress available for upgrade

OS is Windows XP
Media Center Edition
Version 2002 Service Pack 3

Intel(R) Celeron(R) D CPU 3.33 GHz 1.35 GB RAM
Has Core Voltage of 1.212 volts
Hope this helps if not I will take apart the side of the tower and get the other info you need

OK cool, I managed to find this:

http://www.esaitech.com/commerce/ccp50249-intel-d101ggc...

According to that you have a PCI Express 16x slot availiable!

Here is some info from Intel website:

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d101g...

I would recommend that you get some more DDR 400Mhz RAM aswell. In this day and age 2GB is the bare minimum really.

But without getting any more RAM you should be able to put a modern passive graphics card in here no problem  

Get a 4650, 4670, 5570 or 5670, TAKE THE SIDE OFF YOUR MACHINE, out the card in, close the machine, run the driver disk (or download the latest drivers from AMD.com) and BAM!!! you are rockin'.

OK cool, I managed to find this:

http://www.esaitech.com/commerce/c [...] 2Aodox36Mg

According to that you have a PCI Express 16x slot availiable!

Here is some info from Intel website:

http://www.intel.com/support/mothe [...] 025906.htm

I would recommend that you get some more DDR 400Mhz RAM aswell. In this day and age 2GB is the bare minimum really.

But without getting any more RAM you should be able to put a modern passive graphics card in here no problem

Get a 4650, 4670, 5570 or 5670, TAKE THE SIDE OFF YOUR MACHINE, out the card in, close the machine, run the driver disk (or download the latest drivers from AMD.com) and BAM!!! you are rockin'.

those links are dead. Damn.

lol its ok I will just get a 5670 and see if that works...thank you so much for your help. Oh and I can only have 2 GB of Ram so Ive already ordered more just waiting for it to get here. Planning on getting a new PC in a few weeks just got some other things to take care of first. Thanks again for your help

Hiee... did 5670 work with ur pc?