Trying to find a better graphics card for my Dell Inspiron 530

[sakurai-ginpachi]

Hello,
I think(?) my motherboard is a dell inspiron 530. Other than that, it looks like the program AIDA64 has a motherboard ID and it lists some other stuff too? It's also an intel core 2 quad q8200 at 2.33ghz.
my stupid video card has been well, being stupid and resetting itself so I figured if I replaced it I'd try and go up a step or something. Right now I have a ATI Radeon HD 3450. I wanna say it can probably handle a 512mb one at least, but I'm really bad with hardware stuff... I just know everything has to be compatible with the motherboard haha xDDDDDD
Hopefully I gave enough info. If not I can elaborate.

 

[GreenDutchAlien]

Hi.
what power supply do you have ?
At what res do you play ?
Whats the budget ?

 

[sakurai-ginpachi]

I have no idea what the power supply is. I've never opened my tower, and I'm pretty sure I have to do that to see the power supply. But since my video card has been being weird (I get these boxes that appear on the screen and it slowly starts filling the screen, then the picture locks up. But when I press Ctrl+Alt+Del it will still bring up the menu thing for logging off and stuff. I have Vista. It used to just come back itself and tell me an error relating to "amdkmdap", but recently it's only been fixed by restarting the computer.) I don't play tons of new games (because sometimes it seems like they lag, despite having a quad core), but usually I play at 1280x720.
As for price, I'd say around 100 dollars.

 

[GreenDutchAlien]

I think it will be something like 300W, assuming that ; http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127687 or on of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&N=100006656&isNodeId=1&Description=hd7750&x=0&y=0

Weird problem your describing btw, sounds virus like or something, i dunno, weird.
Not sure if a new gpu will fix this.

 

[dish_moose]

Sounds like it is covered in dust and is overheating.
-Bruce

 

[GreenDutchAlien]

Mmmm, the part " i never opened my case" could be a very important clue indeed my dear Watson.

 

[sakurai-ginpachi]

Well, I'll certainly try and open it sometime soon to see if it is dusty! I never thought to think of that, because the back of the computer isn't dusty at all... my dad thought maybe the video card wasn't completely in place. I've always had the weird "resetting" of the video card, it just got worse recently... so that could certainly be a possibility!!! :c I thought I read about people who had that error "Display driver amdkmdap has stopped responding" error just being something with those cards or something...
In any case, I guess an investigation is in order!!!
But I'd still kinda wanting a new one sometime. xDDDDD "cause I'm sure it'd make what few games I do play (Fallout and recently Borderlands... run a bit better).

 

[sakurai-ginpachi]

Best answer selected by sakurai-ginpachi.