New Graphics card..Technical question

[mikekirkness]

My Radeon 9800 pro is faulty,so I am upgrading to a more powerful card.
I am buying a new 256mb card and I am undecided between Geforce 6800GT or Radeon x800pro.
Both of these cards seem desirable but I am worried about power supply/wattage requirements for them to run within my PC.
How do I find what my system power output is? and whether or not the card will be too demanding?
I realise newer cards require a seperate power supply from within the PC to function as did my Radeon 9800 pro but need to know if these newer cards will be ok.
My system; Dell Dimension 8300 :3ghz,I875 chipset,dual channel 2x512 crucial 3200 ram

 

[Crashman]

The 6800 series gives better performance in some games and equal performance in others compared to the x800 series. But the X800 series uses less power.

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[CorpusBiscuit]

I think (I could be mistaken) the recommended power supply for the GeForce 6800GT is 480 watts, while the recommended power supply for the x800 Pro is something like 350 watts.

 

[coylter]

No its not 480 it is 350....

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[Spitfire_x86]

Get GeForce 6800GT

You may need a new PSU with either card since you have a Dell

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[Crashman]

Dell power supplies are rated at continuous power...and usually have enough for just about anything you put in them (as long as you don't put EVERYTHING into them).

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[HardWareBoss]

LOL Nice of dell.

 

[Willamette_sucks]

Dell power supplies are sh*t and proprietary. As far as I konw you can't replace them without a little modding, or the new PSU won't fit right or something. I wouldn't be surprised if he was short on power... but chances are it'll work ok.

As for what card... wait and see what new drivers and patches and the enabling of features brings. However... since your x800 pro is not moddable and is lacking 4 pipes... the 6800 would probably be the better choice. At the top though, I would choose the x800 xt pe

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[CorpusBiscuit]

My fault, I was thinking of the 6800 Ultra which can supposedly run on 350W but 480W is recommended.