Need advice on agp card

[swolenator]

I am considering getting a newer agp card for my aging Dell dimension XPS gen 2. I really want to buy a whole new pc but as I am broke that won't happen. from what I can tell of the original specs found on the web, the power supply is below. Any concerns?

Power
DC power supply:
Wattage
460 W

Heat dissipation
1000 BTU/hr

Voltage
fixed-voltage power supply—110 V at 50/60 Hz
manual selection and auto-sensing power supplies—90 to 135 V at 50/60 Hz;
180 to 265 V at 50/60 Hz; 100 V at 50/60 Hz for Japanese computers


I was looking at these cards on newegg http://preview.tinyurl.com/6396vc My current pc has a p4 3.0ghz, 2gb ram, and a 6800gt. I am debating whether or not if it's worth it and if my power suppy can handle it and whether or not my pc will be bottlenecked. I'm not sure when I will be able to buy a new pc it may be along time and was wondering if any of these would work in my pc and make a big difference. I will be using the card for gaming and mostly play counterstrike source but I also own Call of Duty 4 and I am buying Red alert 3 which the minimum specs for Red Alert 3 are

*Processor – XP: 2.0 GHz (Intel Pentium 4; AMD Athlon 2000+; Multiple Cores) / Vista: 2.2 GHz (Intel Pentium 4/AMD Athlon 2200+/Multiple Cores)
* Video Card – NVIDIA GeForce 6800, ATI Radeon X1800 or higher end DirectX 9.0c compatible gfx card

which means my pc isn't that far above the minimum required specs.

 

[dirtmountain]

The HD3850 AGP would be a good step up and your power supply (if it's a decent one) would be fine for it. I've installed a couple of them in different systems similar to yours and the people have been happy with the performance. Keep an eye on your temperatures, the Dells have pretty poor cooling. It's a tough call since they're so expensive, just depends if it's worth it to you to upgrade a dated system.

*EDIT* make sure you research the drivers, you may have to use the ATI hotfix drivers for AGP.