This Holiday Season

[GeneralSnatch]

Like many families, mine will be heading to the eldest's house for a nice family reunion of sorts during the christmas break. Grandma GeneralSnatch bought a new computer not to long ago from Dell. However, not being at all tech savvy, she bought whatever they had recommended.

Becuase I will be in her house for approx. 9 days come this Christmas, I'd like to buy a new gfx card for her computer. I'm not going to fool myself, this is not at all a gift for her...lol.

I need something cheap, that has:

Video RAM: Required - 64 MB
Video Card 3D Acceleration
Video HW Rasterization
Video HW Transform & Lighting
Pixel Shader Ver.: Required - 1.3

Her current card is a Geforce 8500 GT; which according to 'Can You Run It'; only meets the first and last requirment.

However, if I can avoid spending money by pulling my gfx card out of my pc for a week, I'd rather do that. Is there a way to find out what the wattage of the PSU is without opening up the tower? I'm worried that it won't be enough simply because it's a Dell, and my card is a Radeon HD 4850.

I don't know how to tell if a card meets the requirements above, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also: Should I but a 4870 and run crossfire with a 4850? edit: Of the answer is yes, how should I configure my fans? Currently, I'm using only the fans that came with the coolermaster case, but I bought 2 more. There's one in the frunt, one on the right side, and one in the back. But, there is room for 2 on the top, 1 on the bottom, 1 more on the right side ofthe case, and 2 on the left.

I'm not too canny on airflow in a PC, so again, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[lhuser]

That 8500GT matches all of these requirements. That lab must be on crack, or might not have drivers installed. Of course, it's not an ultimate card for gaming, but it's playable.

 

[JogaBonito1502]

If I had space for more fans, I'd buy more fans. They can't hurt you. As far as XFire goes, the cards must be the same model. If you want you can add another 4850 to Xfire the current one you have. They need not be the same brand.

 

[GeneralSnatch]

Well, when I checked the DxDiag, it says that Direct3D Acceleleration is not available.

Anyways, so would you recommend me getting another 4850 or just buy a 4870, and maybe another down the line?

As for the 8500 GT, are you sure it matches all of those?

EDIT: Your PC currently has the latest driver installed for your GPU. No driver update is necessary at this time. - This is what I was told from Nvidia.com. Also, when I try to run the game I want to, it just crashes, so I'm almost positive it's not powerful enough.

 

[lhuser]

If Direct3D is not available, there's a problem with your drivers then. That card supports 3D Acceleration.

 

[GeneralSnatch]

If Direct3D is not available, there's a problem with your drivers then. That card supports 3D Acceleration.

I don't understand it, I downloaded the latest drivers right off of the website, how can they be messed up? (And how do I fix it ?)

 

[lhuser]

Ok, so since you've done that, then there's something weird. All 8500GTs I've had all had 3D Accelleration, just crap performance. If you want something more powerful, you can get a 4850, and should take care of it. But I'm still trying to figure out how a DX10 card doesn't have a 3D accelerator, while that technology came intergrated strarting with the Geforce 256, which is a preety old card...

 

[GeneralSnatch]

Ok, so since you've done that, then there's something weird. All 8500GTs I've had all had 3D Accelleration, just crap performance. If you want something more powerful, you can get a 4850, and should take care of it. But I'm still trying to figure out how a DX10 card doesn't have a 3D accelerator, while that technology came intergrated strarting with the Geforce 256, which is a preety old card...

Answer: It came from Dell?

 

[lhuser]

If Dell messes with Nvidia GPUs and advertises their PCs with them, then there could be legal lawsuit between Nvidia and Dell for false advertising and ruining someone else's good.

If it's intergrated though, that could make more sense, but it still would be playable.

 

[GeneralSnatch]

If Dell messes with Nvidia GPUs and advertises their PCs with them, then there could be legal lawsuit between Nvidia and Dell for false advertising and ruining someone else's good.

If it's intergrated though, that could make more sense, but it still would be playable.

Well, I'm trying to run Lineage 2 on it, and before anything loads, it crashes the game. I'm really starting to miss my rig ( that you guys all helped pick out parts for). However, the dxdiag def. says that 3d acceleration is not available.