lowest cost good pcie graphics cards w/ vga out for 300W

[meaculpa]

Hello, I'd appreciate your advice on the lowest-cost good PCI-E graphics cards (pcie 1.0a, x16 slot), with a VGA port for a 300 Watt desktop. Can't require any special cooling. My friend wants to play Call of Juarez, Unreal Tournament 3 and Penumbra Collection. For a Dell Inspiron 518 (http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/insp518/en/qrg/MT480A01.pdf). Having trouble with so many constraints.

 

[jay2tall]

Something like an Nvidia GT 430 or ATI HD 5570.

You can always upgrade the power supply on that desktop and get something better than that. But with a 300 OEM PSU you are pretty limited.

 

[Onus]

You should be able to run a HD5670 on that PSU.

 

[plznote]

Yep, a Radeon 5670/5570 or the 430

 

[meaculpa]

Something like an Nvidia GT 430 or ATI HD 5570.

You can always upgrade the power supply on that desktop and get something better than that. But with a 300 OEM PSU you are pretty limited.

Yes, very limited. I see the AMD recommended minimum power supply is 400W for both the 5570 and the 5670. And I'm not wanting to get into upgrading the power supply on this system.

However the Nvidia GT 430 (GDDR3) and newish Nvidia 440 (supports GDDR3 and GDDR5) both say they'll work with 300W.

 

[meaculpa]

Hello, I'd appreciate your advice on the lowest-cost good PCI-E graphics cards (pcie 1.0a, x16 slot), with a VGA port for a 300 Watt desktop. Can't require any special cooling. My friend wants to play Call of Juarez, Unreal Tournament 3 and Penumbra Collection. For a Dell Inspiron 518 (http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/insp518/en/qrg/MT480A01.pdf). Having trouble with so many constraints.

Thanks for the input, jay2tall, jtt283 & plznote. I'm encouraged to see jay2tall & plznote agreed with my research about the Nvidia GT 430 being one of the few appropriate options. Summarizing here for the benefit of those who stumble upon this thread afterwards.

The only PCI Express 2.0 cards (good established compatibility with 1.x PCI-E slots) I found that should work fine with a 300W power supply we're based on the the Nvidia Geforce GT 430 and GT 440. The GT 430 supports only GDDR3 while the GT 440 supports either GDDR3 or the faster GDDR5. I understand that a little GDDR5 is usually better than lots of GDDR3. So I've got the Nvidia Geforce GT 440 with 1GB GDDR5 and VGA port from PNY on order (from Amazon for its better return policy than Newegg with it's restocking fee).

Beware that some GT 440 cards (made by various companies using Nvidia graphics chips) use slower GDDR3 rather than GDDR5 memory and that many producers of GT 440 cards didn't choose to include a VGA port (also called D-SUB) opting only for the higher-end HDMI /DVI outputs. [I don't want to consider an adapter or monitor upgrade].

Thanks again for the help.

 

[meaculpa]

Best answer selected by meaculpa.