A good video card with a 300w psu

azucar75

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Sep 22, 2011
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Hello, im trying to find out what
Graphics card i can put in my pc to play games at a good or high settings. my pc specs are
MODEL : DELL INSPIRON 560
OPERATING SYSTEM : WINDOWS 7 HOME PREMIUM
PSU : 300W
VIDEO : Intel G45/G43 EXPRESS CHIP SET
CPU : PENTIUM DUAL-CORE E5500 @ 2.80 @ 2.80
MEMORY ( RAM ) : 4GB DDR3 ( 800 MHz )
MOTHERBOARD : MODEL NUMBER G43T-DM1 V : A00
{ WITH A PCI-E GEN.2 SLOT }
SOUND : INTEL HIGH DEF AUDIO
RECOMMENDED SCREEN RESOLUTION : 1440x900

Im just looking for a video card that i can play say old republic when it comes out. any info will help.
 

azucar75

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Sep 22, 2011
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Thanks for the info. i been looking at both the 6670 HD and the 5670 HD and they both say recommends a psu of 400w. will it still work without burning out my pc with a 300w PSU? and what Brand of Card and model type of card would you recommend?
 
The HD 5670 / HD 6670 will work with a Dell 300W PSU.

AMD / nVidia recommends a minimum PSU because they don't know what else is in your system. For example, a powerful CPU tends to use more power than a weaker CPU. Overall, your system does not use much power; the Intel E5500 is not a power hog.

Dell also underrates their PSUs a little bit. While the label states your PSU (most likely manufactured by FSP - Fortron Source) is 300w, in actuality it can provide more power. Maybe 325w or a little more, but nothing past 350w I would suspect.

I'll assume you only have one or two hard drives in your system, not something like 10 of them, so your overall power consumption isn't really much even while gaming.

If you were to install the slightly faster HD 6670 which consumes slightly more power than the HD 5670, I would say while gaming you entire system (excluding the monitor) will consume at most 155w - 165w if you use a Kill-A-Watt to measure power consumption from the A/C outlet.
 

leandrodafontoura

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Sep 26, 2006
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In my opinion, it wont matter, you need to upgrade CPU first and PSU. And I believe that intel HD graphics would be alredy an upgrade to your current system...So I would consider getting a i5 simply...you will also need a new motherboard