Want to upgrade my video card, need some help

[Jon]

I have a Dell XPS 410, which currently has a Geforce 8600 GTS and a 375W power supply. I was aiming to buy a 9800 GT, but I've had people tell me that either:

1) My PSU isn't good enough, and I would need to upgrade it before even thinking of buying a new video card.
or
2) Dell doesn't cheap out on their PSU parts, and are very conservatively rated (whatever that means?) Then tell me that people have used 9800 GTs and above on a Dell 375W power supply.

So, I thought I'd ask if a 9800 GT would work on my PSU. Also, I've watched some videos online, and the whole removing/installing process looks pretty simple.

[ryushe]

Thanks for making this thread. I've recently been looking to upgrade my PC (Not any top of the line Rig or anything) but I don't really know the exact step to do so. Now I can just piggy back off the responses here to see what I should do.

Oh, and I've also been looking at the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT.

[Syraxis]

I have a 9800 GT, it is a good card.

Product numbers aside, the 9800GT is a repackaged 8800GT with a GPU that runs at cooler temperatures. Don't let the "repackage" part discourage you, it's an excellent budget card. I say "budget card" because the next grade up would be the x200 series (and they run for hundreds of $ more.)

I actually got this card for Christmas and performance wise, it's completely exceeded my expectations. Runs Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights 2 at max settings on a 22inch wide screen monitor (monitor default dimensions: 1680x1050) .

Haven't tried graphic intense games like Crysis but from what I researched, it's fairs well enough.

Here's the exact model of the card I have (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150316)

Note: You can run SLi with a 9800 and an 8800 (they have the same architecture, granted that your motherboard has two PCI-E x16 slots.)


For your PSU, yeah you definitely need to upgrade it. I recommend in the very least a 550w. It takes a quite a bit of power, despite it running on a cooler GPU.

[Raziel_MGS]

9800s and nvidia are soon to be in a class action lawsuit for higher than acceptable failure rates, be careful