There are a lot of forum messages about Inspiron 530 upgrades, but I can't find any that apply to my system.
This is a tower, not the slimline. I'm running Win7 64-bit, with 8G RAM. It's a very nice machine for my purposes, especially after maxing the memory and upgrading to Win7, and I'll be keeping it for a couple more years (unless I win the lottery!).
The following is from HWInfo32:
Motherboard is Dell 0FM586, Intel chipset G33 + ICH9R
Running Intel Core 2 Q6600 at 2.4GHz
PCI express version 1.0.
Video adapter ATI Radeon 3670/4570/4580 (RV635), PCIe v2.0, 256M of DDR2
The ATI Catalyst software (version 12.1) says it's an HD 3600 series but doesn't provide any finer details. A search for "RV635" on the net implies it's a 3670.
The PSU is Dell, 350W, supplying +12VA:12A, +12VB:18A, +5V:18A, +3V:17A
In addition to the ATI card I'm running two 5.25" 1TB hard drives plus a DVD+-RW drive.
Monitor is a Dell SP2009W, running 1680x1050, 32Bpp, landscape.
For the life of this machine (going on 3 years), I've never been able to run some full screen software without the machine instantly rebooting (some games, Stellarium, even the Windows full-screen slide show at one point). This has occurred in both Vista and Win7, and across all sorts of versions of the ATI software. I suspect the ATI card, but can't pinpoint the actual error. It doesn't look like the card's BIOS can be upgraded (010.088.000.027 according to Catalyst) - at least I couldn't find anything legit looking with a Google search.
Because of this, and because I'll be getting into some video editing, I'd like to get a better card. I'm not a big gamer. I'm OK with upgrading the PSU if I have to. My budget is around $150 for the card, plus some additional for the PSU if required.
Appreciate any recommendations you have. Thanks.
This is a tower, not the slimline. I'm running Win7 64-bit, with 8G RAM. It's a very nice machine for my purposes, especially after maxing the memory and upgrading to Win7, and I'll be keeping it for a couple more years (unless I win the lottery!).
The following is from HWInfo32:
Motherboard is Dell 0FM586, Intel chipset G33 + ICH9R
Running Intel Core 2 Q6600 at 2.4GHz
PCI express version 1.0.
Video adapter ATI Radeon 3670/4570/4580 (RV635), PCIe v2.0, 256M of DDR2
The ATI Catalyst software (version 12.1) says it's an HD 3600 series but doesn't provide any finer details. A search for "RV635" on the net implies it's a 3670.
The PSU is Dell, 350W, supplying +12VA:12A, +12VB:18A, +5V:18A, +3V:17A
In addition to the ATI card I'm running two 5.25" 1TB hard drives plus a DVD+-RW drive.
Monitor is a Dell SP2009W, running 1680x1050, 32Bpp, landscape.
For the life of this machine (going on 3 years), I've never been able to run some full screen software without the machine instantly rebooting (some games, Stellarium, even the Windows full-screen slide show at one point). This has occurred in both Vista and Win7, and across all sorts of versions of the ATI software. I suspect the ATI card, but can't pinpoint the actual error. It doesn't look like the card's BIOS can be upgraded (010.088.000.027 according to Catalyst) - at least I couldn't find anything legit looking with a Google search.
Because of this, and because I'll be getting into some video editing, I'd like to get a better card. I'm not a big gamer. I'm OK with upgrading the PSU if I have to. My budget is around $150 for the card, plus some additional for the PSU if required.
Appreciate any recommendations you have. Thanks.