jpdaballa

I have a 450 watt powersupply with a radeon x600 pro series video card installed.

I really want to upgrade it as it doesn't have shader 3.0 to play games like grand theft auto Iv or bully

(also it isn't getting high enough fps as i want it to)

I was looking to buy a 9800gt 512mb gddr2 as an upgrade but my friends are telling me my computer doesn't support it and cant seem to tell me why.

my mother board is intel i945p

pci express 16X

i currently have a m7170n hp media center edition with 3.5gb ram (4) on winows xp media center edition.

I don't know if i am giving you bad info but i'm just trying to get this done within 1 post.

i have also used a 512mb video card in my comp before and it worked but it was not a gaming card.

so my final questions are does my computer support gddr3 video cards and how many mb

thanks for the help

manic

If your board has a pci-e slot the card will work. As for the speed of
the ram on the video card, yes your computer will support it. The ram
installed in your mobo has nothing to do with the ram onboard a video
card.
The only problem you may have when going to a faster video card
is your power supply. You may be underpowered right now.
A 450 watt psu for pc's nowadays is not very strong. To run a pci-e
video card safely you need 26amps on the 12volt rail/s. This is not
always a must, but it is preferred. A underpowered machine is a time
bomb.

jpdaballa

thanks for the info bro, and the 9800gt says it only requires 400 watts on tigerdirect.com... although i have thought about adding an external power with more ribbons.

for 100$ do you think the price is unbeatable? or do you recomend something else?

i like playing games on high settings, and i play games like gta 4 need for speed undercover and some other mmorpgs

this is the video card i am buying

but can someone explain to me the difference between these two?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...418&CatId=3670

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...555&CatId=1826

for sure these cards will work with my comp right?

emosun

For a 9800gt you'll need a quality 600/650w or higher.

manic

No difference other than brand name, and bfg comes overclocked. The
bfg is cheaper.. If it were me I would go for the bfg. Price mainly.

jpdaballa

okay thanks guys, and also is there anything else i should know about the video card before i should buy it?

the power supply is no big deal i can get a new one

also is it true that the 9800gt is a renamed version of the 8800gt?

if not can someone tell me why the 9800gt is better?

i think im going to look on ebay for the 8800gt since it would be cheaper but the same thing

emosun

It basically is , cept it uses the 9800 gt gpu instead of the 8800 , but the performance is comparable.