sandavsin said:
Damn, just seen my power supply rating and its 305 watts. So gets complicated again. One of the great thing about the Dell is its so quiet, that I really wouldn't want to mess with the power supply. (unless common sense prevails and its inevitable, to get a sensible performance out of the machine.) I reckon if i stick with the power supply, I'm just wasting money really, because the upgrade to the graphics card for the job needed will only be marginal, due to the limitations enforced by the the PSU. Just checked a couple of websites and talking £45-50 for a decent power supply. Any recommendations, as this was a cost that I had not envisaged, so a cheap. quiet but fit for purpose reccommendation would be appreciated. By the sounds of it, it looks like the GTS450 is going to be my purchase. But just out of curiosity, if I binned the idea of wanting 3D playback, just decent DX 11 gaming on the big screen, would that still be my best choice.
http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfh/desktops/dimen_e521/pd.as...
[Link to the specification for my Dell E521]
Even if you get rid of the idea of 3d BR playback, you're still stuck in a quandary due to the fact that neither the 5670 nor the 5750 are really all that great for 1080P gaming. A 5750 is right about the bottom of where 1080P gaming works. Then again, it largely depends on the games you play and what quality (AA/AF) and detail settings you need. WoW plays at 1080P fine with a piece of crap HD4350, while Crysis/Metro2033 are barely playable at even their lowest settings at 1080P on a 5670. That said, they ARE playable, but the minimum frame rates are slightly below 30fps. So, I'd guess as long as you aren't playing either of those two games, most others would play just fine so long as you're okay with lowered detail settings. With that in mind, I'd stick with a 5670 given that it doesn't require additional power - it's the most powerful graphics card you can get that doesn't need any additional power. As JYJJY said, you could probably run a 5750 off that power supply regardless of the wattage but you WOULD need the PCIe 6-pin power. If the PSU doesn't have that, then you'd need to get a molex-to-PCIe adapter which will probably come with the card. However, you'd still be risking the PSU not being strong enough. Generally speaking, Dell puts only what's necessary to adequately power their lower-end computers which is how they keep their prices so low. I'm 90% confident it could power a 5750, but I'm not sure I'd tell someone else to try it unless they had lots of time and patience to return things that didn't work.
I can tell you that you probably would NOT be able to get a GTS450 up with that as those require quite a bit more amperage that I'm guessing that little 305W doesn't have (at least 24A if I recall). So, short of buying a new PSU, you're kind of stuck with the 5670. If you do want to buy a new PSU and go with the GTS450, you really don't need anything more than a 400-500W PSU with at least 24A on the 12V rail. Something like this (and I'm sure there will be many people who have opinions on PSUs...I'm certainly no expert as I've never really been picky with them because, believe it or not, I've never had one fail).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
Hope that helps.