Question about video card upgrade

Hey all.

For some reason, I love pouring more money into an old desktop I have, primarily because it gives me practice with working in the machine with very little worry, since it is not my primary, and it is backed up now to the rafters in any case.

It is a Dell Dimension 4100, bought in 2001. That means it has a number of limitations that no upgrade can overcome, to wit, an 815e motherboard that will only take a Pentium III processor and 512 mb of RAM. That said, I put a new hard drive in it, and a new sound card, and I'm now dual booting it with XP Pro (it came with that awful Windows ME, blech) and Ubuntu 5.10, and the thing runs swimmingly, if a bit loud.

My next project is to upgrade the video card. I'm currently using the stock NVIDIA GeForce2 MX. I want to go higher, primarily because I also want to add a cheap TV tuner, but also just for shits and giggles. This has never and will never be a gaming rig, so I'm not really worried about that - just standard performance, and the joy of doing it.

At this point, I have the stock 200 watt PSU, which I will have to upgrade to 300 watt + for any decent video card. So, advice from you PC freaks out there:

What level of video card will this old battle-axe take, and what brand PSU would be good for me. One caviat: I do have to economize a bit, so I won't go really high end on any components...low mid-range is my cap.

Assuming you have an AGP slot, go with the 6600GT if you can afford it, the plain 6600 if not. (The price difference isn't huge at this point.) I base this mostly on your use of Linux, but even with Windoze, for an older machine, this is a pretty good card that does everything you'll need it to do.

I suggest you avoid ATI due to your Linux installation. You can make one work, but it can be a pain in the butt, and it seems that with every new kernel upgrade, some new workaround is needed for their cards. Also, you have to recompile the kernel first, not knowing whether the ATI driver will even work, and then go about the process of trying to do the tweaking. I say this as an ATI owner.

Sorry, I should have said that.

Now, when you say 6600, you mean up to 6600? As in, I shouldn't go higher than that, but lower would be okay (6200, for example)? As you can see, I'm totally mystified when it comes to these things. I'm just concerned that too much card will a) not run, and b) mess with the mobo. Am I crazy to think it?

I was thinking budget card that delivers the power you need to do what you want. Going lower would be okay too, but there is a significant jump in performance, based on what I've read, between the 6600 and its predecessors.

That said, I've read of people having issues with their Linux installations and the GeForce 7x series whereas the 6x series seems to run flawlessly. Unless you're going to be doing some heavy gaming with this machine, which I doubt based on your description, the 6x series is all you'll need.

Plus, it's getting harder to find AGP cards, and if your AGP slot is 4x, you're not going to benefit as much from the higher end. The 6600 was my quick mental calculation, based on nothing but my general perception of the system you're talking about and what it will be doing.

should work, I'm not sure how much space there is in the Dell case. TigerDirect.com has several supplies under $25 that would handle the power requirements. Since you're not going to be gaming a 64Meg Video card would do you just fine-just make sure it has the NVidia chipset or a S3 chipset because ATI doesn't play well with Linux. If you look around at the sales you could get a video card in the $30-40 range that will do just fine.

I keep reading reviews on Tiger and Newegg about supplies going on the fritz after 6 months...yowza...this fucker's been running fine since 2001. What I really need is Direct X 9 on the thing for the multimedia stuff, I think. ;-)

Be gentle. I'm learning!

You've got fanboys in there that spend most of their day finding forums on which to cast insults at people who have anything less than a three gillion megawatt power supply.

The wattage rating matters, but what matters more are the amps, which aren't advertised up front. You can get a 400W power supply that is a huge pile of crap and a 300 watt that'll run anything you can throw at it. The cheap PSes that come with cases are generally horrible when it comes to running high-end hardware, and some have a tendency to burn out quickly *if* you work them too hard. Based on my experience with people who try to low-ball everything and still claim a high-performance system, what ends up happening is that they throw more hardware at a PS than it ever claimed it could handle and then blame the PS. IOW, some of those bad reviews come from people who don't know how to put a system together in the first place and kill their PS because they spent their money on the latest and greatest graphics card and bought what amounts to a $10 power supply that came with the case that can't deliver more than 6 amps.

That said, upgrading your PS is not a bad idea at all, but you don't need a monster to run the kind of card your system could handle.

..installed but (for some wierd reason) XP doesn't "Like" (blue screen) ATI when you have to install it or up-grade it.

As a Tech fixing computers, I've had to change video cards more than once because XP wouldn't install with ATI cards.
A real Pisser... :)