Dimension E510 Video Card upgrade

Im looking to upgrade my computer's Video card since I susupect its pretty out of date for gaming now a days. The problem is I dont know what what would fit/work with my computer so if you guy could give me some options I would appreciate it and im also going to increase the RAM to 3-4gb. If there are any other upgrades you see that will be good list them too

[b]Specs[/b]

Machine name: DHST21C1
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.101209-1647)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: Dell DM051
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A05
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.66GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Page File: 657MB used, 1802MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.5512 32bit Unicode

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Reply to silencer21

hmmmmm.....an HD 5670 should do fine.

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Reply to computernugget

computernugget wrote :

hmmmmm.....an HD 5670 should do fine.

Would I need an extra power supply like a 400watt?

Reply to silencer21

You might, a 400 watt would be fine to work with that. You could probably get away with a 350 watt powersupply.

Reply to mightymaxio

The e510 only comes with a pentium 4, did you upgrade to pentium d? To know if your current psu is good enough, check how many amps are on the +12v rail. Also make sure you get a single slot, pcie 2.0 card, NOT a 2.1.

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Reply to k1114

yeah its best to max out your ram and get the hd 5670 at least thats what this old customer of mine had to do when we wanted to upgrade his dell. he maxed out the ram and bought a new 5670 (this was before the 6000 series cards and before ram got dirt cheap) he spend around 200 bucks then.

he went with the 5670 because he didnt want to upgrade his power supply. it worked out perfectly for him.

i mean you dont have to upgrade your power supply but its safer if you do though.

you can get this kit of ram, since your board only supports ddr2 speed or 533Mhz
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820134031

and maybe this psu. its a really good quality.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817371029

and for the video card, the one the old guy bought was like this one but from diamond and 1gb version it fit perfectly.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102871

and there two are actual single slot cards.
an msi
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127600

and xfx
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150535

the only issue he had was that it took forever for his windows to load after installing everything becuase the motherboard was detecting the new ram and clocking it down to lower speeds cuz he had faster ram.

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Message edited by computernugget on 09-16-2011 at 10:32:58 PM

Reply to computernugget

k1114 wrote :

The e510 only comes with a pentium 4, did you upgrade to pentium d? To know if your current psu is good enough, check how many amps are on the +12v rail. Also make sure you get a single slot, pcie 2.0 card, NOT a 2.1.

No its all stock so I dont think it has the pentium 4

Reply to silencer21

computernugget wrote :

yeah its best to max out your ram and get the hd 5670 at least thats what this old customer of mine had to do when we wanted to upgrade his dell. he maxed out the ram and bought a new 5670 (this was before the 6000 series cards and before ram got dirt cheap) he spend around 200 bucks then.

he went with the 5670 because he didnt want to upgrade his power supply. it worked out perfectly for him.

i mean you dont have to upgrade your power supply but its safer if you do though.

you can get this kit of ram, since your board only supports ddr2 speed or 533Mhz
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820134031

and maybe this psu. its a really good quality.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817371029

and for the video card, the one the old guy bought was like this one but from diamond and 1gb version it fit perfectly.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102871

and there two are actual single slot cards.
an msi
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127600

and xfx
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150535

the only issue he had was that it took forever for his windows to load after installing everything becuase the motherboard was detecting the new ram and clocking it down to lower speeds cuz he had faster ram.

Thank you for all the good info. The user k1114 said to get a single slot, pcie 2.0 card not a 2.1 but all the card you mentioned are 2.1 what would that mean?

Reply to silencer21

PCIE 2.1 cards work in PCIE 1.0 and 2.0 slots, just not at the full speed. The only cards that even come close to the full PCIE 2.1 speed are the 590 gtx and the 6990 which only use about 75% of it.

Reply to mightymaxio

i dont know. i never ran into any problems testing the old mans computer after the upgrades. i guess its because some people have had issues using a pci-e 2.1 card on a pci-e 1.0 slot but i dont know though.

Reply to computernugget

Ive used pcie 2.1 cards on a 1.0 board on 3 different PC's ive upgraded and not one had a single problem.

Reply to mightymaxio

There are motherboards with 1.0 that have issues with 2.1. You can search this forum and find multiple posts with people with the issue and it is more so of an issue to OEMs that don't release bios updates for their older models. You could try a 2.1 and if it doesn't work just get a refund. Most 5670s are 2.1 but you can still find 2.0, it seems they're not making/running out of stock of 2.0 cards.

The problem still remains if your psu can handle it, according to dell's documentation, you've got a 250w psu. But it hasn't been updated to include the pentium d models so it could be wrong.

Off topic: Even single gpu cards like the 570 or 6950 lose about 2-5% from 2.0 16x vs 8x. The Tom's pcie scaling article shows this. The 6990 loses from 2-20% from x16 to x8 depending the game/res. There's no way to measure pcie saturation accurately so where'd you get 75%?

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Message edited by k1114 on 09-17-2011 at 10:04:41 PM

Reply to k1114

k1114 wrote :

There are motherboards with 1.0 that have issues with 2.1. You can search this forum and find multiple posts with people with the issue and it is more so of an issue to OEMs that don't release bios updates for their older models. You could try a 2.1 and if it doesn't work just get a refund. Most 5670s are 2.1 but you can still find 2.0, it seems they're not making/running out of stock of 2.0 cards.

The problem still remains if your psu can handle it, according to dell's documentation, you've got a 250w psu. But it hasn't been updated to include the pentium d models so it could be wrong.

Off topic: Even single gpu cards like the 570 or 6950 lose about 2-5% from 2.0 16x vs 8x. The Tom's pcie scaling article shows this. The 6990 loses from 2-20% from x16 to x8 depending the game/res. There's no way to measure pcie saturation accurately so where'd you get 75%?

So if I were to max out my RAM, get a 400w psu, and try out a 2.1 single slot would my machine be able to run it then?

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Reply to silencer21

silencer21 wrote :

So if I were to max out my RAM, get a 400w psu, and try out a 2.1 single slot would my machine be able to run it then?

it should run better than it did before due to the ram. and the new psu should handle your system no problem. and you can try getting the 5670 and see if it works, you should have no problems. but if you do you can return it (i hope you can).

or you can get one of these cards instead. i mean they arent as fast as the 5670 but its the next best thing.

xfx 9600GSO $50 before rebate with CoD4 and XFX pouch 20 bucks after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150570

xfx 4670 ddr2 this one is slower than the ddr3 version but its the only single slot version available at time if posting this $50 before rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150525

Galaxy (KFA2) GT240 gddr5 version, $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814162042

out of these i recommend the gt240 cuz its the fastest with the ddr5 memory. and XFX offers lifetime warranty on all their products if you register.

edit: i found a single slot 4670 ddr3 model. its refurbished but it should work
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] CatId=3669

Message edited by computernugget on 09-18-2011 at 02:50:04 AM

Reply to computernugget

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] CatId=3670

Here's a 2.0 5670 just in case.

Reply to k1114

Thank you guys for all the good advice and quick reply's you really helped me out.

Reply to silencer21

no problem bro, thats what most of us are here for

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Reply to computernugget

computernugget wrote :

no problem bro, thats what most of us are here for

After some more reasearch I considering getting an upgrading my cpu to a intel pentium d 925 cause I heard the 900 series were better for gaming but I also heard some models of the E510 depending on the motherboard had trouble with those cpu's.

Whats also been bothering me and I cant find any solid information is if my dimension E510 is a low profile computer meaning I would need to get a low profile video card

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to silencer21

silencer21 wrote :

After some more reasearch I considering getting an upgrading my cpu to a intel pentium d 925 cause I heard the 900 series were better for gaming but I also heard some models of the E510 depending on the motherboard had trouble with those cpu's.

Whats also been bothering me and I cant find any solid information is if my dimension E510 is a low profile computer meaning I would need to get a low profile video card

does your computer look like this?

if it does then you dont need a low profile card. low profile means its half the width of a regular card, while single slot means it only occupies one expansion slot.

and i see no reason why it shouldnt work with a pentium d. i mean ive seen some models with some, and usually the only difference in the motherboard is that some have more sata connectors on them, usually eveything else is the same.

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Message edited by computernugget on 09-19-2011 at 05:58:34 AM

Reply to computernugget

computernugget wrote :

does your computer look like this?

http://www.ktechpc.com/delle521/images2/2.jpg

if it does then you dont need a low profile card. low profile means its half the width of a regular card, while single slot means it only occupies one expansion slot.

and i see no reason why it shouldnt work with a pentium d. i mean ive seen some models with some, and usually the only difference in the motherboard is that some have more sata connectors on them, usually eveything else is the same.

Yup, thats my baby. I was just wondering about the pentium d 800 and 900 series because it seemed some ppl with older version models had a problem with detecting an incompatible CPU and require pressing F1 at bootup
http://en.community.dell.com/what- [...] 10519.aspx

Thanks for clearing up that low profile issue, if I have any more noobish questions ill bother you some more

Reply to silencer21

There is not much performance difference between 800 and 900 series. The 900 series was a die shrink and some more cache which doesn't equate to much performance. Even if you were to get a few hundred mhz, it won't be much difference. Unless you could find it really really cheap than it's really not worth it. You're better off saving the money for a whole new rig.

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Message edited by k1114 on 09-19-2011 at 06:31:15 PM

Reply to k1114

k1114 wrote :

There is not much performance difference between 800 and 900 series. The 900 series was a die shrink and some more cache which doesn't equate to much performance. Even if you were to get a few hundred mhz, it won't be much difference. Unless you could find it really really cheap than it's really not worth it. You're better off saving the money for a whole new rig.

I found some for around $40 thats not bad right?
also my processor is a Intel(R) Pentium(R) D 2.66GHz, does that mean I have a Pentium D or some earlier version

Message edited by silencer21 on 09-19-2011 at 06:53:57 PM

Reply to silencer21

That's pretty good, I'd say go for it as long as it's more mhz, that's really the only decent performance boost they will give.

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Reply to k1114

k1114 wrote :

That's pretty good, I'd say go for it as long as it's more mhz, that's really the only decent performance boost they will give.

So is a Intel(R) Pentium(R) D 2.66GHz still a Pentium D? and would it be a pretty good improvement to get the Pentium D 925 or dont even bother?

Reply to silencer21

yeah its a pentium D, its the entry level pentium D the 805. and the 925 would be an improvemnt since its clocked faster.

Reply to computernugget

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