Ok I have an older dell *yea I know its a Dell* and its an AGP system. My specs are:
Pentium 4 CPU 2.60 GHz
1 GB Ram
250w PSU

My 9800 pro had its fan die on me. I tried to buy a new fan at the cost of 12 to replace it but the connector to the fan is too big here are some pics:
Left side is the new one I bought http://img.photobucket.com/albums/ [...] G_0238.jpg
Left one is the one connector http://img.photobucket.com/albums/ [...] G_0237.jpg

NOw here are my fans:
bottom one is the replacement: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/ [...] G_0239.jpg

Since I dont feel like spending more money hopeing to find a fan that fits the connector to my card I think that I will just replace my 9800 pro AGP

I cannot afford to majorly upgrade my system or to replace it. So i'm looking for a good card thats better than my 9800pro but that will work on my system.

So far I'm stuck between these two cards:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102718
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102073

Will my system be able to handle these two cards and if so which ones and how well do these cards work?

If none of these cards work will I be able to find a brand new ATi Radeon 9800 XT AGP card anywhere? Its a slight upgrade from my 9800pro.

I'd go with an AGP version of the X2600XT. You should check with the manufacturer regarding power supply requirements but I believe it would work with a decent 250 watt PSU. See Tom's charts for information:

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 965-6.html

See the comment from the chart below:

The X1650 Pro is only 2 tiers higher, but the X2600XT is 5 tiers. The X1650 Pro only has 12 pixel pipelines (and your Radeon 9800 Pro has 8) but the newer architecture of the X2600XT has 120 stream processors, which probably equates to 16 pixel pipelines under the older architecture's definitions.

Another choice would be a 3650 DDR2 model. I have one in my wife's PC until we can afford a 4850 upgrade. It's in the same price range and is 4 tiers above your old 9800 Pro.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814131097

That said, a couple of years ago, I replaced an All in Wonder 9800 Pro TV card with an X1650 Pro AGP and I went from medium settings in Oblivion to high. The X1650 Pro might be all you need, and is more likely to work with the power supply you have.

Still, I'd recommend the best card for your money, and that's the X2600XT but you might need to upgrade to a 350 watt, or higher power supply for it. For your PC, I'd recommend the Antec Earthwatts 430 at $59.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817371006

If you don't upgrade your power supply, you might encounter problems. I had a generic 350 watt when I went from a 9800 Pro to an X1650 Pro, but the whole PC died in a thunderstorm. Could have been a spike on the power lines that the cheap power supply couldn't handle. Since then, I've always bought decent PSU's like Antec, Seasonic, Enermax etc.

Companies like Dell often skimp on power supplies, but they won't be as bad as a generic PSU in a barebones.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102751
x1650
$ 49.99


that or take a walk on the wild side

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814500029
7600gt with gddr3 59.99


the 7600 is the hands down winner

ps your PSU should be fine with the 7600gt

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] ments-7600

if the connector is the only problem you could just remove the connector from the old fan. Cut it off with about 3 inches to spare. Then cut the connector off of the new fan. strip the wires, twist them (black to black, red to red), then tape them up. end result will be new fan with old connector.

Or try this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 9&Tpk=9800

^+1, ty I was gonna mention that, if somebody already didn't, just do that...spend no more money and just save your money, b/c it is a recession.

When I read the post the first thing I though was to splice them together but you guys beat me to it. Although you will see an improvement the problem with buying a newer card is that you will be bottlenecked by your CPU.

The funny thing is ATI recommends a 300watt PSU for the 9800 series. http://ati.amd.com/products/radeon [...] specs.html

One of these should help to decide:
http://support.asus.com/PowerSuppl [...] uage=en-us
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
http://web.aanet.com.au/SnooP/psucalc.php
http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html

I don't know what your budget is or how long you want to keep the system, but the HD 2600XT is a good choice. The HD2000 and HD3000 series will also get you better video processing capabilities with UVD. Not sure that matters to you, that puts the HD2600XT or a HD3580 as a better choice over previous generations.

He should not go Nvidia 7xxx generation. There are blurring issues that I noticed when we had a 7600gs in an X2 3800+ build with an Nvidia 405 chipset vs. the P4 with an X1650 Pro. It's a problem that Nvidia didn't fix until the 8xxx series.

As for the PSU, the Earthwatts is quality for not that much more. I wouldn't bother with splicing a connector on a 250 watt Dell PSU. Sometimes, the solutions people come up with here are more hobbyist than practical.

It makes more sense to get a new power supply that can power the system then to splice the connector on the old PSU. As for being CPU limited, I don't think his P4 would be overly taxed by an X2600XT. We aren't talking 3850 here. The card's he's considering came out when the P4 was still the most common processor in OEM builds.

Another route you could go is to get a silent cooler like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835186017
No worry with the fan and its a $20 fix.

FYI:
HD2600XT > HD3650 => HD2600 pro > x1650.

I think we really need to see what the budget looks like. Sounds like its somewhere around $100 or so. Correct?

Check out one the power estimators I posted above. I did a generic P4 with a 9800 pro and then with the HD2600XT and a HD3650.
It came out to really close for all of them. So, I think the 250PSU will likely still work with the x1650,HD2600 or HD3650 cards.

I think this is the cheapest/best route to go for a new video card without the new PSU.

I did the 3850 and it jumped about 20watts, but it would be tough with your PSU and you'll need to know the amps for the voltage rails. This is likely out of the budget.

I definitely would rule out and X1600/1650 series cards, unless its an incredible deal. You also need to think about longevity. Is the plan to keep the computer running for another 3 years or buy completely new in 3 to 6 months? The longer you keep the system, the better a new PSU sounds.

yipsl i respect you very highly, but come on bro all he has to do is put the other connector on, i;ve done it b4 for VGA cards, cpu coolers, fans, etc etc etc, dude why spend money when it doesn't grow on trees, come on bro..come on..,

yeah we're not talking about splicing the PSU wires. just splicing the fan wires. I don't see where that is less practical then buying a brand new gpu and power supply for a system he will probably not keep for more then a year.

I think you misread yipsl, there talking about splicing the fan connector, not the PSU.

I'm a hardware noob so I have no clue on how to splice.

There is a red wire and a black wire. Cut them both and twist the like colors together and wrap some electrical tape around them. Now you have the correct connector on your new fan.

hmm I will give that a try

OK I have some splicing/getting my 9800 back up and running.

So I spliced on the new connector, I then spen 25 min or so trying to get the scew holes lined up to put the fan back onto my heat sink. I finally got one of the hole to line up then I put one screw in the fancan spin but I cant quite get the other 2 screw holes to line up so I cannot get 2 out of the 3 screws in.

So can I get by with just having 1 screw in? I mean can it hurt the fan?

Another question. HOw can I tell how cool the fan will keep the card?is there a program to check my card temp?

I put the spliced fan pack in and loaded it up and it does spin. I tried moving the fan around to see if it was loose but it seems to be in there tightly.

The new wire that connects the fan to the card is fairly long. Will it be a future problem for my card if I leave it long? I'm thinking it will be ok if I just make sure that the cord doesnt tough my card or get in the way of the fan.

You can use a program like RivaTuner to check you temps and if the fan isn't moving I think you'll be ok without the other screw. If the wires are a little long you can just cut them a little shorter and guess what you are officially a modder now.

It feels kinda cool to actually be able to do this myself.