Graphics Card Update Advice Needed

[Real McKoi]

Hi,

I am wanting to upgrade my graphics card in order to be able to more reasonably run some games better, specifically MS Flight Sim (Century of Flight) with addons and The Sims (for the Mrs!), ie. not the very latest state of the art games (apologies, but I'm more of a console man with the exception of the Flight Sim).

Anyway, I currently have a Radeon 7000 (0x5159) 64MB graphics card with a Viglen D945PLM system model (motherboard?), a 3.2GHz processor (2CPU's), 2046MB RAM and one PCI Express* x16 bus add-in card connector (I believe that's the info a more knowledgeable friend told me to provide....most of it's Greek to me). The following possibilities have been suggested:

Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GT Silent Fanless 512MB DDR2 HDTV/DVI
Asus GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI
Gainward BLISS GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/DVI/HDMI

Other recommendations included no external power and fanless. Would these options be on the money? If so, which one or is there an even better alternative? Many thanks for your help in advance.

Mark

 

[Real McKoi]

Thank you both for your respective advices and the welcome.
Resolution is 1280 x 1024 and 32 bit colour (is that what you were after?) The in-game (MSFS2004) resolution is the default 800 x 600 x 32. Budget is around about £50/60, definitely not more than £100....as I said earlier, I am definitively NOT a top end computer gamer....that sort of thing is left to the console. As for "any modern PCI-e card", I really was after specific type recommendations as I know absolutely nothing about computers (I find most of the contents of this forum frightening!) Regarding the current psu rating, I found the information below (I hope it's the relevant information that you wanted, but I'm really not sure).

When using high wattage PCI Express x16 graphics cards, use a power supply with a 2 x 12 main
power cable. The 2 x 12 main power cable can provide up to 144 W of power from the +12 V rail.

2.11.2 Add-in Board Considerations
The boards are designed to provide 2 A (average) of +5 V current for each add-in board. The total
+5 V current draw for both boards is as follows: a fully loaded D945PLM board (all three
expansion slots and the PCI Express x16 slot filled) must not exceed 8 A.

Many thanks once again.

Mark

 

[Real McKoi]

Thanks once again for the very rapid reply (everyone on this forum is so helpful).
Does your recommendation of the ATI HD3650 fit in with the amperes provision for the 12v rail given in the tabled information below (which is what I think you're asking????...I hope).

DC Loading Characteristics

DC Current at:

Mode DC Power +3.3 V +5 V +12 V -12 V +5 VSB

Minimum loading 275 W 3.5 A 12 A 17 A 0 A 0.34 A (S0)
1.00 A (S3)

Maximum loading 500 W 16 A 23 A 29 A 0.20 A 0.34 A (S0)
1.10 A (S3)



Cheers, Mark

P.S. Sorry, those figures are supposed to come out lined up in vertical columns....so the +12 DC Power equates to a minimum loading of 17A and a maximum loading of 29A.

 

[Real McKoi]

Thanks for the continuing advice Trunks9486. The PC was bought (built???...lmao) 2 1/2 years ago and the Radeon 7000 was in it. You slightly lost me with your info about what's 400W and what's rated at 500W.....but then Greek is definitely not my first language , so it's hardly surprising

 

[Real McKoi]

I've opened the machine up and had a look at what's what. It appears that there is bad news which may well require a re-evaluation of the recommendations given so far. The PSU is rated at 300W....an FSP300-60THN-P to be precise. Please help? What graphics card should I be looking at now?

Many thanks for your time on this.

Mark

 

[Real McKoi]

Many thanks Trunks and Andeh for your most recent replies....I think I have my answer now. In fact, I started to suspect as much (as I have learnt an awful lot in the last few days about this subject).

Cheers, Mark