Dell Inspiron 530 tower video card upgrade?

druidlabs

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Mar 8, 2012
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10,510
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.
 

druidlabs

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Mar 8, 2012
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10,510
Finally tracked down a couple of recent posts about similar 530 systems and I've decided to go with the ASUS EAH6670/DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 6670 GDDR5.

Ran the power estimator at http://www.thermaltake.outervision.com/Power spec'ing the 6670 and it looks like the 350W PSU should have no problems.

Will report back once it arrives and is installed.
 

DM186

Splendid



Well it looks like you solved your own problem. Hat's off to you.
Because I was going to recomend that same card and tell you that the 6670 only
uses 54w on load and you have two 12v rails = to 30a which puts it at 144w on A rail and 216w on b rail.

So here is two links. The first is the one I would look at. The second link is the total of all the GPU's so you can see If there is one you think will meet your needs and Good luck ot you.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150542

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&N=100006662&isNodeId=1&Description=HD+6670&x=0&y=0
 

druidlabs

Honorable
Mar 8, 2012
4
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10,510
Thanks for the links. I decided to go with the ASUS because of the DDR5 memory. Yeah, it's overkill for my needs - at least for now :) - but it was still within the budget.
 

druidlabs

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Mar 8, 2012
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10,510
Got the card and dropped it in with no problem, other than moving some cables out of the way.

Windows Experience Index (graphics) went from 5.3 to 7.1.

The new card's fan runs a bit louder than the old card (39%, 2100RPM, running around 34C. This is with almost no load, as you might guess.

Stellarium runs, yay!

The only problem I have so far is that I sometimes can't get out of Windows hibernate. I have to long-press the power button to shut the machine down, then when I power up again all fans go high and the machine doesn't boot. Long-pressing the power button again shuts the PC down and power on works the second time. Windows doesn't complain, so it's waking up from the hibernation OK. This never happened with the old card.

If anyone's got some suggestions about the problem or fix, that'd be great. Otherwise I'll just live with it.
 

DM186

Splendid
Well it is good to hear about your new card but your rig going to sleep that is why I turned mine off. Because eveytime it would got to sleep and I wake it All my game on my desk top would leave.

I had to open up my games file to put then all back on my desk top. You shouldn't be doing the the hard shut down. Go into your power settings and turn it off or make some adjustment to it

Also make sure all of your drivers are up to date. There is a difference for your PC to just save on power as to go to sleep. But if you do all that then your gaming will suffer.
 

DM186

Splendid


As long as your PSU is the right watts you can use it with out any problems and of course you have a PCIe x 16 slot which you probably do.

FYI in the future don't bring up old threads it is not allowed. Next time PM someone or start you own thread. Good luck to you.