Seeking guidance for purchasing a video card

What kind of video card slot do you have on your motherboard? PCI-express x16? AGP?

 

Ok, then you probably have a PCI-e x16 slot. Although I suggest you open your computer and make sure you have an x16. Here's what a PCI-e x16 slot looks like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci_express#Overview
It doesn't matter if it is 1.0 or 2.0, it's all backwards compatible.

Now, how much are you willing to pay for the card? You can get a GeForce 9600GT for very cheap nowdays, and it will do what you need to do and more. For example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814143161

Also, how much power can your power supply output? This card would need at least 400 watts.

 

If all you're runnign is Oblivion then just get something like this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814162019

$30 after rebate

And unlike the 9600 it doesn't require extra PSU power (since usually PSUs supplied by manufacturers are very weak)

 

All I can say is that if you go with an nVidia card, be very sure to remove all traces of the ATI video drivers out of the system. For some reason switching brands can cause strange driver problems......at least it did last I heard....I haven't done much with PC setups in the last year or two, other than to set up a Vista machine a few months back. Might be easier to just get an ATI card. Anything in the 4000 series of ATI cards should serve you fairly well. To be honest, I haven't touched an nVidia card in quite literally years, so I can't really comment on their abilities and know nothing about what series they're up to or anything to make an informed suggestion. But nVidia does tend to influence gaming developers to optimize their games for their cards (that "The way it's meant to be played" stuff), so......it's a toss up.

 

Not really...

It won't need an upgrade if it doesn't draw further power other than whats supplied by the slot itself... Anything equal or under a 9500, 8600, or ati 3650.

 

There shouldn't be much of a hassle at all switching from an ATI GPU to an nvidia one so you still might want to consider the nvidia alternatives. I've changed the GPU in a couple of computers from ATI to nvidia before and I've had no problem at all. All there is to it is to actually unisntall all ATI components and install the nvidia drivers for the GPU and you should be done.

 

If you're going to upgrade your PSU, be careful, because some PC manufacturers use proprietary PSUs and putting a standard off-the-shelf one in there might fry your motherboard (I think they switch the pins around or something). I don't know if HP/Compaq does this, I know Dell used to do this (I think they quit but I'm not sure), so you might want to check before buying anything.

 

Make sure not to buy a discount ATi card if you want to play Oblivion.
I've got the same processor as you, 4 gigs of RAM, and an ATi HD3650,
and Oblivion lags like hell. It's retarded though, because Fallout 3 works fine on the highest settings.

From my experience, ATi cards don't work well with Oblivion. Stick with Nvidia.

 

With no power connector your options would be a 9500 or a 4670. For this generation, ATI has the more efficient card and thus their 6 series still works without a power connector while Nvidia's equivalent, the 9600 does. The 4670 is significantly more powerful then the 9500 and thus you should look into just how much oblivion favors nvidia cards.

 

A PCI-E slot only provides 75W. My old dell had a 305W power supply and easily ran my x1650 pro, which uses a bit more energy then today's 4670. My friend's dell's 300W PSU easily runs his 4670. The recommended requirements are by no means the actual requirements of the PSU, especially since the total wattage of a PSU doesn't reflect the actual usable power (or the usable power for the processor / graphics card, the 12V rail). http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powerco...HD_4670/24.html - A well built 200W PSU would do the job

edit - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon...gtx,2270-6.html as you may be able to see, pretty much any card is an upgrade from an xpress 200

 

I would hope you aren't talking about a 4670, as it would be impossible for the card to require 19A, because that would make that 228W at 12V, literally 3 times what the PCI-E slot can produce (and this card doesn't require an extra plug, I assure you)