Looking to update my old 4700 to sail me through another year before making a bigger purchase this X-mas. I have a Nvidia GeForce 6800 256 mg card now and want to go to something better for under $100, plus i'll be adding two 1GB sticks of RAM to replace my stock RAM. Figure this will give me more life before i feel compelled to drop big cash on a modern system. Any help for video card suggestions?|||Your problem is that the Dimension 4700 ships with a factory 305W power supply, which isn't strong enough to run midrange cards like a GeForce 9800GT and Radeon 4770 (those require 400W while the Radeon 4850 and GTS 250 require 450W minimum).
Making matters worse, the Dimension 4700 psu is a proprietary BTX mount, so the standard ATX power supplies you can get for $40 won't fit properly. You have to spend $80 for a Dell-specific replacement like these:
http://www.supernotebook.com/power-suppl…
http://www.pcpower.com/products/power_su…
That's too expensive. So to upgrade within your budget you've gotta drop down the graphics card power rankings a bit. The most powerful cards you can run without a psu upgrade are:
#1 - Radeon 5670
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…
#2 - GeForce GT240
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as…
Both are in-between the GeForce 9600GT and 9800GT in performance, but the 5670 is slightly faster and supports DX11.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphic…
http://www.techspot.com/review/240-ati-r…
Good luck!|||Tom's Hardware recommends a GeForce 9600 GT or a Radeon 4850. I'd personally go with the 4850.
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