Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100)

soniclude · 01-11-2009, 12:35 AM

Hey all,

I've decided to dive into upgrading my video card, and since I have not a clue of what to do, the first thing I wanted to do was look for a reputable tech forum with helpful people. And after browsing a few threads here I think I've found it!

So I've got a Dell Dimension 9100 that I bought back in Fall 2004, and it's been a sturdy rig for the past 4 years. But I think I fell off the gaming curve about 2 years ago and I've been putting off all the "next-gen" stuff ever since. I need to bite the bullet and upgrade, and my gut tells me that the bottleneck on this system is the video card. The dual-core processer seems to be holding up, and I recently got an extra gig of RAM, so unless I'm wildly off base, the video card needs to go!

After doing some research I've settled on a few candidates. Ideally I'd be in the <$100 range, since I'm not looking for bleeding edge performance. My 19" LCD is locked at a max of 1280x1024, which looks just fine to me and has the added benefit of capping my performance requirements. Also, I'm quite used to being behind the curve - I'm going through the PS2 library as we speak!

Long story short, what I really need advice on is:

a) which of these cards will be the best <$100 investment for playing the last couple years of video games (and some future ones too!), and

b) what else do I need to do to make sure the card I pick will work in my system? I've run across lots of things that I don't understand, such as PSU power requirements, PCI-Express 2.0 compatibility, and general motherboard mumbo jumbo, so my next step is to figure out what else (if anything) I need to upgrade simultaneously (assuming my poor old Dell can handle it!).

Fortunately, one thing I DO understand is 3DMark06 scores!

Right now my 6800 gets me around ~1900, and if I've done my research right, I can get a card that does ~9000 for around or less than $100. Here are the few that I've picked out for further scrutiny:

Card, 3DMark Score, Cheapest Price, 3DMark/$

NVIDIA
9600GT, 9200, $105, 88
9600GSO, ?

ATI
3870, 9400, $100, 94
3850, 8600, $86, 100
4670, ?

In case you're wondering, I got these numbers from yougamers.com. The ones that weren't listed I'm not quite as sure about, but the various reviews I read mentioned all these cards together, so I figure they're in the same performance range.

I know this is a HUGE post and that I'm asking alot, but I'm eager to find out what I need to know to get this upgrade going, and I'd really appreciate your advice!

**emosun** · 01-11-2009, 01:40 AM

Welcome to tsf

Is it still useing the stock dell 375w powersupply? And just letting you know ahead of time your not going to hit 9000 in 3d mark with only 100$ , but we sould be able to get you up to 4500 to 5500. My machine specs are pretty close to the 9100 and I get a 4500.

soniclude · 01-11-2009, 11:37 AM

Yup I opened the case up last night to try and clean it, and the PSU says 375W. What video card do you have now?

**emosun** · 01-11-2009, 01:08 PM

I have an older HIS HD 2600 xt. It was 180$ when I bought it becuase it was the fastest midrange card they made at the time before they went up to the 2900's.

Now since you have the stock power supply in your computer there is where you might not get a good upgrade for only 100$. Your stock 375w unit is only good for low end cards such as a geforce 8500/9400 and so on. They maybe be a bit faster then a 6800 but there both a tad slower then my older 2600. Your definitely going to need a better one if you hope to get a better then low end card. With your budget and power supply these are all I would recommend.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=8500+gt+512mb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=9400+gt+512mb

For a midrange card you would want at least a quality 500/550w or higher to get somthing like a 9600.

soniclude · 01-11-2009, 01:23 PM

Hmm... what if I was willing to upgrade the PSU as well? Would I be able to drop a 500W+ unit into the Dell? They don't seem all that expensive!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...401%20-%20500W

Seems to me that the gains from dropping $60 on a 8500GT/9400GT wouldn't be quite as nice as dropping ~$100 on a mid-range card and an additional $40-50 on a PSU. I know that's higher than my original budget, but I'd be OK with it if the money was well spent and the parts would last me for a while!

Of course, that's assuming I don't need to upgrade the motherboard as well...

**emosun** · 01-11-2009, 01:31 PM

Actually a decent 500w power supply will be arround 70$ or higher. The cheap ones are cheap for a reason , it's be cause there not very good units. There not 80+ cert and usually don't have enough amps on the 12v rail.

This is about the cheapest 500w thats a good unit on newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817703015

And the cheapest 9600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814500083

**emosun** · 01-11-2009, 01:37 PM

course now that I look at it its still only 150 total , not a bad upgrade.

123456789 · 01-11-2009, 01:48 PM

show get around the 5k mark on 3d mark with your cpu... if u get them

i got a pentium 4 3.0ghz (slower than ur cpu), and a 9800gt (about 10% better than 9600) and i get 5264 marks. so it'll be close to what i get.

if u had a c2d it would be around 9k.

**emosun** · 01-11-2009, 01:57 PM

I don't know. The pentium D is pretty impressive for what it is. It's basically two pentium 4's bolted together that share a cache. Your pentium 4 is really holding you back , he actually should be well over the 5000 mark as I get a 4500 will my little 2600 xt.

123456789 · 01-11-2009, 02:36 PM

i was just going by something i seen on another forum (might not be reliable, but seems to be).

3DMark Score 5753
SM 2.0 Score 2218
SM 3.0 Score 3092
CPU Score 1311
with a Pentium D 2.8 Ghz, with 1.5 Gb RAM, 9800gt

offtopic: ya i know pentium 4 is bottlenecking it, i would get 2x score if i upgraded ... but dont got $$ to upgrade to c2d (already got another gaming com anyway

).

**emosun** · 01-11-2009, 02:48 PM

You got me interested in what my score may be. Last time I checked I got a 4500 , but just ran it now and I got a 5786. Yikes , guess it's updated drivers.

soniclude · 01-11-2009, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 123456789

if u had a c2d it would be around 9k.

Wow the processor makes that much of a difference? Totally not what I expected! I hope the D is good enough to keep up with a new card!

Quote:

Originally Posted by emosun

Actually a decent 500w power supply will be arround 70$ or higher. The cheap ones are cheap for a reason , it's be cause there not very good units. There not 80+ cert and usually don't have enough amps on the 12v rail.

Thanks for the tip, this is exactly the kind of stuff that I don't know enough about! The 9600 you linked to looks pretty good, but it's a GSO and not a GT... is there a big difference in performance/power requirements between the two?

Also, I'm concerned about the motherboard. It's got a 16X PCI-E slot (that the 6800 is in right now), but I don't know if it's PCI-E 1.0 or 1.1 or 2.0. If a new video card is advertised as PCI-E 2.0, will it work with this motherboard? And if it does, will it be working at its full potential?

Any thoughts on the ATI cards as well?

Dropping ~$150 for a PSU + video card upgrade doesn't seem bad at all! It's nice being behind the curve.

123456789 · 01-11-2009, 04:37 PM

ya 9k for the 9600gt or 9600gso . difference in my pentium 4 and c2d is about 2x more...

it will work. pcie 2.0 x16 is backwards compatible with PCIe x16, shouldnt be much difference at all, 2.0 is faster though.

Differences between PCI-Ex16 1.0 and 2.0?

**emosun** · 01-11-2009, 05:48 PM

The only problem would be if you had a VIA chipset as they need bios updates to supports new cards , but I think dell uses intel chipsets or somtimes nvidia so you should be fine.

As for ati , just stick with nvidia. When you change over to ati from nvidia or vise versa the drivers usually have conflicts with each other and it much easier on you and the machine to stay with one side or the other.

soniclude · 01-11-2009, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 123456789

it will work. pcie 2.0 x16 is backwards compatible with PCIe x16, shouldnt be much difference at all, 2.0 is faster though.

Thanks for the info. How much faster are we talking? Would I be missing out on alot of 3DMarks and performance if I used a 2.0 card in a 1.0 slot?

Quote:

Originally Posted by emosun

The only problem would be if you had a VIA chipset as they need bios updates to supports new cards , but I think dell uses intel chipsets or somtimes nvidia so you should be fine.

Sounds good! Is there any way I can find out for sure? 3DMark didn't have the manufacturer of the motherboard listed on the specs page...

One last question: is there a big difference between 500W and 550W with respect to the 9600GT? I'm leaning towards that card right now and I want to make sure I have enough juice to power it!

soniclude · 01-11-2009, 07:14 PM

Oh hey look what I found at $100 after rebate:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150323

Blazer1 · 01-11-2009, 07:17 PM

I have a Dell XPS 410, I think that is similar to yours?

My system;
Dell XPS 410
E6400 overclocked to 2.60GHz
2 Gb G-Skill 800Mhz ram
Sapphire HD 3870 GDDR4 860/1151
stock Dell 375w power supply

3D mark06 score 10,100

soniclude · 01-11-2009, 08:40 PM

Bad news, I did some research and found out that the Pentium D 820 will be a major bottleneck for a 9600GT or 9800GT. I've actually already seen this on my current system: when I played the WoW trial, my frame rate with shadows on was capped at around 20fps no matter what the other settings were, but when I turned shadows off I could put everything on max and the frame rate was 40+.

So it looks like in order to complete this upgrade, I'd actually also need a new processor. Which more than likely means I'd need a new motherboard, since I've also read that mobo's that support the Pentium D don't usually support newer processors.

Putting it all together, that's mobo + processor + psu + video card... am I better off just building a new system and salvaging my RAM/HD/optical drives?

123456789 · 01-11-2009, 09:03 PM

well it would be be better if u plan on playing future games. you could make a decent one for about $600

like on a core 2 duo graphics run pretty smooth compared to pentium's in games like crysis, that are graphically intensive.

drumminkyd1212 · 01-11-2009, 09:05 PM

Im actually looking into the same upgrade. I have the same PC as well, except I have a pentium 4 HT 3.0 Ghz.

Its just hard to find a PSU for the Dimension 9100 Due to the mother board. I found the card, and the XFX 9800GT is the one, now Im just trying to find a reliable 500-600W PSU for under $100.

01-11-2009, 12:35 AM	#1 (permalink)
soniclude Registered User Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 13 OS: Windows XP SP3	Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) Hey all, I've decided to dive into upgrading my video card, and since I have not a clue of what to do, the first thing I wanted to do was look for a reputable tech forum with helpful people. And after browsing a few threads here I think I've found it! So I've got a Dell Dimension 9100 that I bought back in Fall 2004, and it's been a sturdy rig for the past 4 years. But I think I fell off the gaming curve about 2 years ago and I've been putting off all the "next-gen" stuff ever since. I need to bite the bullet and upgrade, and my gut tells me that the bottleneck on this system is the video card. The dual-core processer seems to be holding up, and I recently got an extra gig of RAM, so unless I'm wildly off base, the video card needs to go! After doing some research I've settled on a few candidates. Ideally I'd be in the <$100 range, since I'm not looking for bleeding edge performance. My 19" LCD is locked at a max of 1280x1024, which looks just fine to me and has the added benefit of capping my performance requirements. Also, I'm quite used to being behind the curve - I'm going through the PS2 library as we speak! Long story short, what I really need advice on is: a) which of these cards will be the best <$100 investment for playing the last couple years of video games (and some future ones too!), and b) what else do I need to do to make sure the card I pick will work in my system? I've run across lots of things that I don't understand, such as PSU power requirements, PCI-Express 2.0 compatibility, and general motherboard mumbo jumbo, so my next step is to figure out what else (if anything) I need to upgrade simultaneously (assuming my poor old Dell can handle it!). Fortunately, one thing I DO understand is 3DMark06 scores! Right now my 6800 gets me around ~1900, and if I've done my research right, I can get a card that does ~9000 for around or less than $100. Here are the few that I've picked out for further scrutiny: Card, 3DMark Score, Cheapest Price, 3DMark/$ NVIDIA *9600GT*, 9200, $105, 88 *9600GSO*, ? ATI *3870*, 9400, $100, 94 *3850*, 8600, $86, 100 *4670*, ? In case you're wondering, I got these numbers from yougamers.com. The ones that weren't listed I'm not quite as sure about, but the various reviews I read mentioned all these cards together, so I figure they're in the same performance range. I know this is a HUGE post and that I'm asking alot, but I'm eager to find out what I need to know to get this upgrade going, and I'd really appreciate your advice! __________________ Dell Dimension 9100 Pentium D 820 2.8GHz EVGA GeForce 8600GT 256MB DDR3 3GB RAM Last edited by soniclude; 01-11-2009 at 12:54 AM.

01-11-2009, 01:40 AM	#2 (permalink)
emosun Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: usa Posts: 7,087 OS: xp pro sp2 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) Welcome to tsf Is it still useing the stock dell 375w powersupply? And just letting you know ahead of time your not going to hit 9000 in 3d mark with only 100$ , but we sould be able to get you up to 4500 to 5500. My machine specs are pretty close to the 9100 and I get a 4500. __________________ Gpu Benchmarks Cpu-Z Power supply information and selection Gpu-Z Video card quick list

01-11-2009, 11:37 AM	#3 (permalink)
soniclude Registered User Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 13 OS: Windows XP SP3	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) Yup I opened the case up last night to try and clean it, and the PSU says 375W. What video card do you have now? __________________ Dell Dimension 9100 Pentium D 820 2.8GHz EVGA GeForce 8600GT 256MB DDR3 3GB RAM

01-11-2009, 01:08 PM	#4 (permalink)
emosun Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: usa Posts: 7,087 OS: xp pro sp2 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) I have an older HIS HD 2600 xt. It was 180$ when I bought it becuase it was the fastest midrange card they made at the time before they went up to the 2900's. Now since you have the stock power supply in your computer there is where you might not get a good upgrade for only 100$. Your stock 375w unit is only good for low end cards such as a geforce 8500/9400 and so on. They maybe be a bit faster then a 6800 but there both a tad slower then my older 2600. Your definitely going to need a better one if you hope to get a better then low end card. With your budget and power supply these are all I would recommend. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=8500+gt+512mb http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=9400+gt+512mb For a midrange card you would want at least a quality 500/550w or higher to get somthing like a 9600. __________________ Gpu Benchmarks Cpu-Z Power supply information and selection Gpu-Z Video card quick list

01-11-2009, 01:23 PM	#5 (permalink)
soniclude Registered User Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 13 OS: Windows XP SP3	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) Hmm... what if I was willing to upgrade the PSU as well? Would I be able to drop a 500W+ unit into the Dell? They don't seem all that expensive! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...401%20-%20500W Seems to me that the gains from dropping $60 on a 8500GT/9400GT wouldn't be quite as nice as dropping ~$100 on a mid-range card and an additional $40-50 on a PSU. I know that's higher than my original budget, but I'd be OK with it if the money was well spent and the parts would last me for a while! Of course, that's assuming I don't need to upgrade the motherboard as well... __________________ Dell Dimension 9100 Pentium D 820 2.8GHz EVGA GeForce 8600GT 256MB DDR3 3GB RAM

01-11-2009, 01:31 PM	#6 (permalink)
emosun Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: usa Posts: 7,087 OS: xp pro sp2 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) Actually a decent 500w power supply will be arround 70$ or higher. The cheap ones are cheap for a reason , it's be cause there not very good units. There not 80+ cert and usually don't have enough amps on the 12v rail. This is about the cheapest 500w thats a good unit on newegg. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817703015 And the cheapest 9600 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814500083 __________________ Gpu Benchmarks Cpu-Z Power supply information and selection Gpu-Z Video card quick list

01-11-2009, 01:37 PM	#7 (permalink)
emosun Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: usa Posts: 7,087 OS: xp pro sp2 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) course now that I look at it its still only 150 total , not a bad upgrade. __________________ Gpu Benchmarks Cpu-Z Power supply information and selection Gpu-Z Video card quick list

01-11-2009, 01:48 PM	#8 (permalink)
123456789 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Newfoundland, Canada Posts: 141 OS: Windows XP Professional SP3 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) show get around the 5k mark on 3d mark with your cpu... if u get them i got a pentium 4 3.0ghz (slower than ur cpu), and a 9800gt (about 10% better than 9600) and i get 5264 marks. so it'll be close to what i get. if u had a c2d it would be around 9k. __________________ My other pc: Motherboard : Asus P5kpl-cm, CPU: Pentium 4 3.0ghz Prescott, Memory: 2gb Corsair ddr2-800, Hard drive: 120 gb samsung hard drive, Case: Antec Three Hundred, PSU: 650w Antec True Power Trio, Video Card: Zotac 9800gt 512mb

01-11-2009, 01:57 PM	#9 (permalink)
emosun Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: usa Posts: 7,087 OS: xp pro sp2 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) I don't know. The pentium D is pretty impressive for what it is. It's basically two pentium 4's bolted together that share a cache. Your pentium 4 is really holding you back , he actually should be well over the 5000 mark as I get a 4500 will my little 2600 xt. __________________ Gpu Benchmarks Cpu-Z Power supply information and selection Gpu-Z Video card quick list

01-11-2009, 02:36 PM	#10 (permalink)
123456789 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Newfoundland, Canada Posts: 141 OS: Windows XP Professional SP3 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) i was just going by something i seen on another forum (might not be reliable, but seems to be). 3DMark Score 5753 SM 2.0 Score 2218 SM 3.0 Score 3092 CPU Score 1311 with a Pentium D 2.8 Ghz, with 1.5 Gb RAM, 9800gt offtopic: ya i know pentium 4 is bottlenecking it, i would get 2x score if i upgraded ... but dont got $$ to upgrade to c2d (already got another gaming com anyway ). __________________ My other pc: Motherboard : Asus P5kpl-cm, CPU: Pentium 4 3.0ghz Prescott, Memory: 2gb Corsair ddr2-800, Hard drive: 120 gb samsung hard drive, Case: Antec Three Hundred, PSU: 650w Antec True Power Trio, Video Card: Zotac 9800gt 512mb

01-11-2009, 02:48 PM	#11 (permalink)
emosun Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: usa Posts: 7,087 OS: xp pro sp2 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) You got me interested in what my score may be. Last time I checked I got a 4500 , but just ran it now and I got a 5786. Yikes , guess it's updated drivers. __________________ Gpu Benchmarks Cpu-Z Power supply information and selection Gpu-Z Video card quick list

01-11-2009, 04:37 PM	#13 (permalink)
123456789 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Newfoundland, Canada Posts: 141 OS: Windows XP Professional SP3 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) ya 9k for the 9600gt or 9600gso . difference in my pentium 4 and c2d is about 2x more... it will work. pcie 2.0 x16 is backwards compatible with PCIe x16, shouldnt be much difference at all, 2.0 is faster though. Differences between PCI-Ex16 1.0 and 2.0? __________________ My other pc: Motherboard : Asus P5kpl-cm, CPU: Pentium 4 3.0ghz Prescott, Memory: 2gb Corsair ddr2-800, Hard drive: 120 gb samsung hard drive, Case: Antec Three Hundred, PSU: 650w Antec True Power Trio, Video Card: Zotac 9800gt 512mb Last edited by 123456789; 01-11-2009 at 04:40 PM.

01-11-2009, 05:48 PM	#14 (permalink)
emosun Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: usa Posts: 7,087 OS: xp pro sp2 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) The only problem would be if you had a VIA chipset as they need bios updates to supports new cards , but I think dell uses intel chipsets or somtimes nvidia so you should be fine. As for ati , just stick with nvidia. When you change over to ati from nvidia or vise versa the drivers usually have conflicts with each other and it much easier on you and the machine to stay with one side or the other. __________________ Gpu Benchmarks Cpu-Z Power supply information and selection Gpu-Z Video card quick list

01-11-2009, 07:14 PM	#16 (permalink)
soniclude Registered User Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 13 OS: Windows XP SP3	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) Oh hey look what I found at $100 after rebate: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150323 __________________ Dell Dimension 9100 Pentium D 820 2.8GHz EVGA GeForce 8600GT 256MB DDR3 3GB RAM

01-11-2009, 07:17 PM	#17 (permalink)
Blazer1 Registered User Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 43 OS: XP	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) I have a Dell XPS 410, I think that is similar to yours? My system; Dell XPS 410 E6400 overclocked to 2.60GHz 2 Gb G-Skill 800Mhz ram Sapphire HD 3870 GDDR4 860/1151 stock Dell 375w power supply 3D mark06 score 10,100

01-11-2009, 08:40 PM	#18 (permalink)
soniclude Registered User Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 13 OS: Windows XP SP3	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) Bad news, I did some research and found out that the Pentium D 820 will be a major bottleneck for a 9600GT or 9800GT. I've actually already seen this on my current system: when I played the WoW trial, my frame rate with shadows on was capped at around 20fps no matter what the other settings were, but when I turned shadows off I could put everything on max and the frame rate was 40+. So it looks like in order to complete this upgrade, I'd actually also need a new processor. Which more than likely means I'd need a new motherboard, since I've also read that mobo's that support the Pentium D don't usually support newer processors. Putting it all together, that's mobo + processor + psu + video card... am I better off just building a new system and salvaging my RAM/HD/optical drives? __________________ Dell Dimension 9100 Pentium D 820 2.8GHz EVGA GeForce 8600GT 256MB DDR3 3GB RAM

01-11-2009, 09:03 PM	#19 (permalink)
123456789 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Newfoundland, Canada Posts: 141 OS: Windows XP Professional SP3 My System	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) well it would be be better if u plan on playing future games. you could make a decent one for about $600 like on a core 2 duo graphics run pretty smooth compared to pentium's in games like crysis, that are graphically intensive. __________________ My other pc: Motherboard : Asus P5kpl-cm, CPU: Pentium 4 3.0ghz Prescott, Memory: 2gb Corsair ddr2-800, Hard drive: 120 gb samsung hard drive, Case: Antec Three Hundred, PSU: 650w Antec True Power Trio, Video Card: Zotac 9800gt 512mb Last edited by 123456789; 01-11-2009 at 09:07 PM.

01-11-2009, 09:05 PM	#20 (permalink)
drumminkyd1212 Registered User Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 7 OS: xp sp2	Re: Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100) Im actually looking into the same upgrade. I have the same PC as well, except I have a pentium 4 HT 3.0 Ghz. Its just hard to find a PSU for the Dimension 9100 Due to the mother board. I found the card, and the XFX 9800GT is the one, now Im just trying to find a reliable 500-600W PSU for under $100.