Low wattage but need new video card for my dell

[darthbobvilla]

hi all,

i have been checking high and low and everywhere to try to figure out what to upgrade my dell dimension 4550 video card to.

here is what i have right now.

dell dimension 4550
512 mb ram soon to have 1012
2.5 ghz cpu
in my book it says my wattage is 250
i have for video card an ati radeon 9500 pro 128 mb.
agp 2.0 4x

i opened the case and it seems i have an extra connection wire for bigger or more advance cards and the connection wire as an ati label on it with some numbers...it's the moleg connector i think , the one that has four pin openings to connect to the video card.


i have been looking at nvidia cards and ati's cards.

i am looking at ati's 9800 cards and i seem to have the connector to plug it in but i was wondering if i have enuff power to support it.I would consider also nvidia cards if they respect what i have.

i don't want to do an upgrade and have a card that will crash on me because of not enuff power.

i was on dell's forum and they post tons of cards that could fit in my pc but they don't talk about the wattage and a lot of the cards that they list needs a lot of juice so i am kinda skeptical about that list.

can somebody help me here or give me info on what they did. I cannot really upgrade the psu first cause i don't know how to do it and second i am still paying on the thing and would probably have to almost change the pc if i chnage the psu.

need good advice.

thanks.

 

[Crashman]

You have a very good card, are you certain you want to upgrade?

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[Spitfire_x86]

Yeah, Radeon 9500 Pro is still a very decent card

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[DeathClock]

Well I tried to calculate it, and well switching from a 9500 to a 9800 would require 9 more watts. And well I had a look on what there's in that PC, and I don't think that PSU can handle any more Watts. I doubt it would even like 2 mem sticks instead of one. Don't know for sure, but I think that the PC is standard already very close to that 250Watts.

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[Crashman]

Dell's power supplies are rated at constant load, not peak load, I believe.

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