[Nvidia] Do I have enough power to run a GT 240?

[britishcoder]

Hi there.
My current PC is a Dell Inspiron 531 and I'd like to upgrade the graphics card to try and get a little more life out of it. A little looking around on Nvidia's site(the only brand I've ever used, had no problem with and this site said in a recent article that they're where it's at for the mid-range cards) seems to suggest that the GT 240 would be the best chance this machine has for an upgrade without upgrading the power supply, too.

However, I know almost nothing useful about graphics cards. It currently has an 8600 GT.
I've 2 questions. Firstly, can the power supply it came with even run a GT 240 and secondly, how big an upgrade can I expect, in real terms?

According to a Cnet forum posting I found, this model ships with a 320 watt 4-SATA, 1 P4 and 1 24 pin power supply
It currently has an AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 5600+ processor, 4GB of memory, the aforementioned graphics card and a standard 500GB hard drive. I thought that may help anyone here who does the maths in their head if it's likely to be close.

In the past I've mostly run world of warcraft. Currently I play Call of Duty 4 and Left 4 Dead but am looking forward to Star Trek Online and my current card doesn't hit the recommended specs. I'd hate to be playing on a poor graphics setting.

Any help would be great.

 

[jay2tall]

I would say a GT 240 is a good call for you without having to upgrade a PSU. It's probably about the best you are going to do, but will run you at least $100 for it. I'd opt for the DDR5 version.

Palit GT240 DDR5 with free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814261060

 

[OvrClkr]

yea the 240's barely pull any juice.

That Palit does not look bad at all, new caps and DDR5. Is Palit trying to step it up?

 

[hell_storm2004]

They have no ATI with them now, so nVidia is all they have got so they have to step it up.

 

[pkw4]

i think you will definately get away with it but no idea how long that psu will last as it roughly takes 6wats less than a 9600gt.
i have an athlon x2 4000+ with a radeon x1650 runing fine on a cheap 250w psu as a basic backup pc and thats fine.
also had an x1900xt running on a 350w psu but that ended in tragedy as it would keep turning off with the amount of power it would try to draw, the x1900xt was a power sucker unlike the gt240, i give you thumbs up with my experience

 

[britishcoder]

Thanks. I'm assuming that the 1GB version would be sucking all kinds of extra juice.

Here the 512MB version starts at around £58 and the 1GB version at around £80 or so.
That beats the £500 or so it'd cost me to get a PC that'd last a while, so it wins.
If I have to upgrade the PSU at some point I would, I'd just prefer not to.
I'd love to have a company here like New Egg, we keep hearing about them.

 

[OvrClkr]

GPU's that do not use a 6 or 8 pin PCI-E power connector are considered low power cards regardless if it is a 215/512/1Gb model....

 

[britishcoder]

And that would include any 240 using DDR5, or just the Palit?
I'm just a little concerned about that huge heatsink taking up a lot of space. Most of them of course look quite large, but I've noticed a couple that seem to not be so bulky. Just worried about case space more than anything.

 

[OvrClkr]

The 240 is a very small GPU, you have nothing to worry about....

 

[britishcoder]

Yeah, I just looked and the 8600s look about the same size.

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[pkw4]

don't go by how big the cards size is, go by the wattage it takes. the card is slightly slower than a 9600gt but will be a huge step from an 8600 in preformance, just dont try overclocking anything as that will up the power consumption rapidly.
the extra mem on the card will mainly help at higher resoloutions but wont make any difference to the power it take really, this card is kind off low profile power wise so go get it !! LOL. best upgrade you get.

 

[OvrClkr]

^^the reason I stated the size is due to the OP asking if it will fit in his case, has nothing to do with power consumption...

 

[shouyou]

The 240 is a very small GPU, you have nothing to worry about....

that is true. I can fit like 8 in my case lol

 

[Guest]

Yeah, I just looked and the 8600s look about the same size.

Thanks again for all the help.

How did you get on British Coder? I have the same PC & am also thinking about getting the GT240 cos of the power restrictions. And I reckon you've been looking at Novatech by those prices
Anudder Brit