Can I upgrade Graphics card in Dell E521?

[Wally Wacko]

Hey guys I bought the dell e521 during november last year and its a pretty good overall system for the purposes I use it for but the graphics card is mince. Its Nvidia Geforce 7300 Turbocache 256MB DVI/VGA Output with 1xS-Video Output. Its an AMD Athlon 64 dual core system, 2 gig ram and 250 hard drive. Im worried incase if I cant upgrade the graphics card as I want better viewing and quality with movies.

 

[sharingan_sasuk]

Of course you can. Just replace your current card with another PCI-Express one

 

[hp7909]

As above. But, is your only reason 'I want better viewing and quality with movies'? Because you'll be wasting your money. E.g. NVIDIA's 7 series all have the same image features/quality/etc, see here. That is from your (roughly) £30 card to the top £174 7950 models

NB: Quality of MPEG4 videos (DivX, XviD, etc) can be poor because of quality/bitrate chosen to encode at. If DVD quality is poor, then problem could be elsewhere, maybe monitor?

If adamant to change, find out more about PSU if planning to go OTT, i.e. something that requires extra power.

 

[Wally Wacko]

Hey guys, firstly of all Im going to replace the monitor as if such, I was jsut worried that it was integrated so it couldnt be upgraded.

 

[Cairnsey]

even if it was integrated, you should be able to disable it the bios, but I've seen Dell BIOS', and they aren't exactly fully customisable. Disabling onboard VGA a basic option, however, so it should let you.

 

[squiffy]

Like the others have said, upgrading graphics card won't increase picture quality. Being a Dell they design them to not be upgradable, check case mountings are standard, enough space and (if you want a gaming card) the PSU has a PCI-E graphics power lead, and the PSU is up to the job.

I use a Nvidia 6150 onboard which is lesser spec to yours, picture quality is great. It's not the graphics card, it's the source or even the display. Calibrating your display helps too (Avia or DVE)

Try using post processing in ffdshow if you find movies are blocky, if they're low bitrate this can be reduce blocking.

 

[glenimp617]

hang on a sec guys, before giving the lad advice please make sure you are right in what you are saying.

The E521 will only accept half height cards I believe so it limits your choice, unless of course they have change their specs again

 

[Cairnsey]

hang on a sec guys, before giving the lad advice please make sure you are right in what you are saying.

The E521 will only accept half height cards I believe so it limits your choice, unless of course they have change their specs again

Sorry