Question

I know we all have mixed emotions about Dell PC's but I am trying to retrieve my PC by buying a new one for my son and I get a discount on Dells. The system itself should be adequate for his needs but I wonder about the videocard. The best upgrade possible is a 256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro . Is this card any good? He mostly plays Final Fantasy XII online. Thanks for any responses in advance.

This card I mentioned is $100 more than the standard card that comes with the PC that is a NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Integrated Graphics GPU. I assume this is for the newere PCIe slot. Budget isn't really that much of a consideration although I wouldn't want to go too overboard given that he is currently playing this game on our 4-year old PC with a NVIDIA 5200 card. I would like to be able to perhaps play Oblivion myself down the road so I would need a decent card for that.

How much power would I need?

You could probably run a 7600 GT on a 20A PSU. Ive heard that the 8600 GT can run on a 22A.

Oh, and AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800

You have to be very careful with Dell and their low-end systems. It may not be the case, but confirm that if you buy the system without the X1300 there will be an available PCI-E X16 graphics card slot. Dell used to screw people over buy selling machines without AGP slots. Not sure if this is the case currently but it is something to check on.

Next, instead of buying their X1300 find out what you're options are on upgrading the PSU through them. OEM PSUs are often proprietary which means you usually have to go through them to get it (price premium included) to make sure you get one that is compatible. It's not always the case, but often is. The good thing is that they usually rate their PSUs based on true wattage so if they tell you 350W, it is a 350W PSU and not a 350W Max PSU. Try and upgrade to the highest PSU you can fit your budget. 350 should suffice, but 400 would be better.

Balance out the lower cost of the PSU upgrade through Dell (at least it should be cheaper than $100) and get a better GPU aftermarket through a place like Newegg or ZipZoomFly.

If Oblivion is on your horizon, then I'd opt for an X1650XT over the 7600GT. Otherwise the 7600GT is a great card. Also make sure that any card you're looking at will fit in the Dell case. Those ultra slim Dell cases should be avoided if you're looking at upgrading the graphics.

I'd lean towards recommending the X1650XT over the 7600GT. Better vista drivers for one. Either one would be more than enough for what you're doing. I'm running a 7600GS currently and I'm quite happy with it other than occational driver based performance issues in Vista.

This one comes with Vista