# Video Card Upgrade Advice (Dell Dimension 9100)



## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

Hey all,

I've decided to dive into upgrading my video card, and since I have not a clue of what to do, the first thing I wanted to do was look for a reputable tech forum with helpful people. And after browsing a few threads here I think I've found it! :grin:

So I've got a Dell Dimension 9100 that I bought back in Fall 2004, and it's been a sturdy rig for the past 4 years. But I think I fell off the gaming curve about 2 years ago and I've been putting off all the "next-gen" stuff ever since. I need to bite the bullet and upgrade, and my gut tells me that the bottleneck on this system is the video card. The dual-core processer seems to be holding up, and I recently got an extra gig of RAM, so unless I'm wildly off base, the video card needs to go!

After doing some research I've settled on a few candidates. Ideally I'd be in the <$100 range, since I'm not looking for bleeding edge performance. My 19" LCD is locked at a max of 1280x1024, which looks just fine to me and has the added benefit of capping my performance requirements. Also, I'm quite used to being behind the curve - I'm going through the PS2 library as we speak!

Long story short, what I really need advice on is:

*a)* which of these cards will be the best <$100 investment for playing the last couple years of video games (and some future ones too!), and

*b)* what else do I need to do to make sure the card I pick will work in my system? I've run across lots of things that I don't understand, such as PSU power requirements, PCI-Express 2.0 compatibility, and general motherboard mumbo jumbo, so my next step is to figure out what else (if anything) I need to upgrade simultaneously (assuming my poor old Dell can handle it!).

Fortunately, one thing I DO understand is 3DMark06 scores! :grin: Right now my 6800 gets me around ~1900, and if I've done my research right, I can get a card that does ~9000 for around or less than $100. Here are the few that I've picked out for further scrutiny:

_Card, 3DMark Score, Cheapest Price, 3DMark/$_

*NVIDIA*
*9600GT*_, 9200, $105, 88_
*9600GSO*_, ?_

*ATI*
*3870*_, 9400, $100, 94_
*3850*_, 8600, $86, 100_
*4670*_, ?_

In case you're wondering, I got these numbers from yougamers.com. The ones that weren't listed I'm not quite as sure about, but the various reviews I read mentioned all these cards together, so I figure they're in the same performance range.

I know this is a HUGE post and that I'm asking alot, but I'm eager to find out what I need to know to get this upgrade going, and I'd really appreciate your advice! :smile:


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

Welcome to tsf

Is it still useing the stock dell 375w powersupply? And just letting you know ahead of time your not going to hit 9000 in 3d mark with only 100$ , but we sould be able to get you up to 4500 to 5500. My machine specs are pretty close to the 9100 and I get a 4500.


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

Yup I opened the case up last night to try and clean it, and the PSU says 375W. What video card do you have now?


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

I have an older HIS HD 2600 xt. It was 180$ when I bought it becuase it was the fastest midrange card they made at the time before they went up to the 2900's.

Now since you have the stock power supply in your computer there is where you might not get a good upgrade for only 100$. Your stock 375w unit is only good for low end cards such as a geforce 8500/9400 and so on. They maybe be a bit faster then a 6800 but there both a tad slower then my older 2600. Your definitely going to need a better one if you hope to get a better then low end card. With your budget and power supply these are all I would recommend.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...A=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=8500+gt+512mb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...A=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=9400+gt+512mb

For a midrange card you would want at least a quality 500/550w or higher to get somthing like a 9600.


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

Hmm... what if I was willing to upgrade the PSU as well? Would I be able to drop a 500W+ unit into the Dell? They don't seem all that expensive!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010320058 113142554&name=401 - 500W

Seems to me that the gains from dropping $60 on a 8500GT/9400GT wouldn't be quite as nice as dropping ~$100 on a mid-range card and an additional $40-50 on a PSU. I know that's higher than my original budget, but I'd be OK with it if the money was well spent and the parts would last me for a while!

Of course, that's assuming I don't need to upgrade the motherboard as well... :grin:


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

Actually a decent 500w power supply will be arround 70$ or higher. The cheap ones are cheap for a reason , it's be cause there not very good units. There not 80+ cert and usually don't have enough amps on the 12v rail.

This is about the cheapest 500w thats a good unit on newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703015

And the cheapest 9600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500083


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

course now that I look at it its still only 150 total , not a bad upgrade.


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## 123456789 (Oct 27, 2007)

show get around the 5k mark on 3d mark with your cpu... if u get them

i got a pentium 4 3.0ghz (slower than ur cpu), and a 9800gt (about 10% better than 9600) and i get 5264 marks. so it'll be close to what i get.

if u had a c2d it would be around 9k.


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

I don't know. The pentium D is pretty impressive for what it is. It's basically two pentium 4's bolted together that share a cache. Your pentium 4 is really holding you back , he actually should be well over the 5000 mark as I get a 4500 will my little 2600 xt.


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## 123456789 (Oct 27, 2007)

i was just going by something i seen on another forum (might not be reliable, but seems to be).

3DMark Score 5753
SM 2.0 Score 2218 
SM 3.0 Score 3092 
CPU Score 1311 
with a Pentium D 2.8 Ghz, with 1.5 Gb RAM, 9800gt


offtopic: ya i know pentium 4 is bottlenecking it, i would get 2x score if i upgraded ... but dont got $$ to upgrade to c2d (already got another gaming com anyway :smile.


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

You got me interested in what my score may be. Last time I checked I got a 4500 , but just ran it now and I got a 5786. Yikes , guess it's updated drivers.


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

123456789 said:


> if u had a c2d it would be around 9k.


Wow the processor makes that much of a difference? Totally not what I expected! I hope the D is good enough to keep up with a new card!



emosun said:


> Actually a decent 500w power supply will be arround 70$ or higher. The cheap ones are cheap for a reason , it's be cause there not very good units. There not 80+ cert and usually don't have enough amps on the 12v rail.


Thanks for the tip, this is exactly the kind of stuff that I don't know enough about! The 9600 you linked to looks pretty good, but it's a GSO and not a GT... is there a big difference in performance/power requirements between the two?

Also, I'm concerned about the motherboard. It's got a 16X PCI-E slot (that the 6800 is in right now), but I don't know if it's PCI-E 1.0 or 1.1 or 2.0. If a new video card is advertised as PCI-E 2.0, will it work with this motherboard? And if it does, will it be working at its full potential?

Any thoughts on the ATI cards as well?

Dropping ~$150 for a PSU + video card upgrade doesn't seem bad at all! It's nice being behind the curve. :smile:


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## 123456789 (Oct 27, 2007)

ya 9k for the 9600gt or 9600gso . difference in my pentium 4 and c2d is about 2x more... 

it will work. pcie 2.0 x16 is backwards compatible with PCIe x16, shouldnt be much difference at all, 2.0 is faster though.

http://www.techsupportforum.com/f24/differences-between-pci-ex16-1-0-and-2-0-a-224459.html


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

The only problem would be if you had a VIA chipset as they need bios updates to supports new cards , but I think dell uses intel chipsets or somtimes nvidia so you should be fine.

As for ati , just stick with nvidia. When you change over to ati from nvidia or vise versa the drivers usually have conflicts with each other and it much easier on you and the machine to stay with one side or the other.


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

123456789 said:


> it will work. pcie 2.0 x16 is backwards compatible with PCIe x16, shouldnt be much difference at all, 2.0 is faster though.


Thanks for the info. How much faster are we talking? Would I be missing out on alot of 3DMarks and performance if I used a 2.0 card in a 1.0 slot?


emosun said:


> The only problem would be if you had a VIA chipset as they need bios updates to supports new cards , but I think dell uses intel chipsets or somtimes nvidia so you should be fine.


Sounds good! Is there any way I can find out for sure? 3DMark didn't have the manufacturer of the motherboard listed on the specs page...

One last question: is there a big difference between 500W and 550W with respect to the 9600GT? I'm leaning towards that card right now and I want to make sure I have enough juice to power it!


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

Oh hey look what I found at $100 after rebate:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150323


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## Blazer1 (Dec 1, 2008)

I have a Dell XPS 410, I think that is similar to yours?

My system;
Dell XPS 410
E6400 overclocked to 2.60GHz
2 Gb G-Skill 800Mhz ram
Sapphire HD 3870 GDDR4 860/1151
stock Dell 375w power supply

3D mark06 score 10,100


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

Bad news, I did some research and found out that the Pentium D 820 will be a major bottleneck for a 9600GT or 9800GT. I've actually already seen this on my current system: when I played the WoW trial, my frame rate with shadows on was capped at around 20fps no matter what the other settings were, but when I turned shadows off I could put everything on max and the frame rate was 40+.

So it looks like in order to complete this upgrade, I'd actually also need a new processor. Which more than likely means I'd need a new motherboard, since I've also read that mobo's that support the Pentium D don't usually support newer processors.

Putting it all together, that's mobo + processor + psu + video card... am I better off just building a new system and salvaging my RAM/HD/optical drives? :sigh:


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## 123456789 (Oct 27, 2007)

well it would be be better if u plan on playing future games. you could make a decent one for about $600

like on a core 2 duo graphics run pretty smooth compared to pentium's in games like crysis, that are graphically intensive.


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## drumminkyd1212 (Jan 12, 2009)

Im actually looking into the same upgrade. I have the same PC as well, except I have a pentium 4 HT 3.0 Ghz.

Its just hard to find a PSU for the Dimension 9100 Due to the mother board. I found the card, and the XFX 9800GT is the one, now Im just trying to find a reliable 500-600W PSU for under $100.


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

There is one other option, which is to get a mid-range card like the 8600GT or GTS to hold me over until I build a new system. The deals seem pretty decent:

8600GT:
$50 AR: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814145146
$50 AR: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500024
$38 AR: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500012

8600GTS:
$40 AR: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130430

My only concerns would be:
1. Can the Dell 375W 18A PSU run these cards?
2. With the GTS, an extra 6-pin power cord is needed... I think I see one in my case, but I'm not entirely sure!
3. What kind of 3DMark score could I get with these cards and the Pentium D 820? I'm assuming the bottleneck for these cards would be much lower... would I get into the 4-5K range?


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

drumminkyd1212 said:


> Its just hard to find a PSU for the Dimension 9100 Due to the mother board. I found the card, and the XFX 9800GT is the one, now Im just trying to find a reliable 500-600W PSU for under $100.


emosun posted a great option for a 500W PSU earlier in the thread!


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

soniclude said:


> Bad news, I did some research and found out that the Pentium D 820 will be a major bottleneck for a 9600GT or 9800GT. I've actually already seen this on my current system: when I played the WoW trial, my frame rate with shadows on was capped at around 20fps no matter what the other settings were, but when I turned shadows off I could put everything on max and the frame rate was 40+.


Thats becuase shadows is a gpu related acceleration , not cpu. Your cpu should be just fine for a 9600/9800.


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

soniclude said:


> emosun posted a great option for a 500W PSU earlier in the thread!


That would only be ok for a 9600 , the 9800 will need a quality 600w or higher.


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## drumminkyd1212 (Jan 12, 2009)

emosun said:


> That would only be ok for a 9600 , the 9800 will need a quality 600w or higher.


the 9800GT requires a minimum of 400W. A 500W would work fine


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

No , the company will purposely low ball the requirement for the powersupply to appeal to a larger market. The actual requirement is a 600/650w or higher with 26 amps on the 12v rail.


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

emosun said:


> Thats becuase shadows is a gpu related acceleration , not cpu. Your cpu should be just fine for a 9600/9800.


Are you sure? On the shadow thing, it seems like those calculations use alot of CPU, since the framerate is consistently low at any level of shadows I use (low, medium, high), but makes a huge gain when I disable them completely. All of this seems independent of other graphics settings too... I can set everything in a game to either low or high and it can chug, but disabling shadows gives a huge gain no matter what the other settings are.

As for the bottleneck, I've read about TONS of people complaining that the Pentium D is a significant bottleneck for their systems... and after upgrading to the Core 2 Duo, they were able to get huge performance gains with the same cards!

Gotta make sure I cover my bases before making an investment! :grin: What do you all think about the 8600 idea?


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

soniclude said:


> What do you all think about the 8600 idea?


Don't like it. It's a band aid. If you go with the 9600 you will have a much nicer card an powersupply to move onto your next rig if you choose to upgrade more in the future , rather then spending the money you got on a 8600 thats , well , starting to show it's age a tad. Remember the 8600 was the competitor for the 2600.

And no , shadows are a gpu related acceleration. The reason it laggs with any kind of shadows is mostly because your useing a geforce 6800. I have your same cpu and my shadows work fine. Even if you buy the 9600 and powersupply and still want a better cpu afterwards , then you can always get one.


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

Well humor me for a minute and suppose that I do go with the bandaid. :smile: Would I be able to drop either 8600 in to my system without upgrading the PSU?


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

Only the 8600 gt with ddr2 , not the gts or ddr3. They will require more power.


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

Damn really? I've kind of been eyeing the Zotac 8600 GT with DDR3 because it's so cheap ($38 AR):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500012

In one of the reviews someone claims to be running this one with a 250W PSU! Is that even possible?


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## Wrench97 (May 10, 2008)

soniclude said:


> Damn really? I've kind of been eyeing the Zotac 8600 GT with DDR3 because it's so cheap ($38 AR):
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500012
> 
> In one of the reviews someone claims to be running this one with a 250W PSU! Is that even possible?


I have changed quite a few Dell 375w units that would not hold up to video card upgrades so 250w noway not for long.


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## yvrdave (Jan 22, 2009)

I also have a Dell 9100 that I have wanted to upgrade. I have the dual 3.0 CPU, 1 gig, and the ATI X300 video card.

From what I've read, I would add 2 more gigs ram, 
replace the PSU with a Power Cooler 500w Dell Compatible PSU. 
Replace the video card with an HIS 4670 IceQ or HIS 4830 IceQ card.

My question is whether these ATI cards are compatible.


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## emosun (Oct 4, 2006)

Welcome to tsf.

That should work. But 550 to 600 watt for the 4830. 500w for the 4670.


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## yvrdave (Jan 22, 2009)

emosun said:


> Welcome to tsf.
> 
> That should work. But 550 to 600 watt for the 4830. 500w for the 4670.


Emosun - Thanks for your advice.


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## soniclude (Jan 11, 2009)

Hey all, just wanted to do a post-mortem on this thread.

Ironically, my 6800 died earlier this month, which means my "upgrade" would now become a "replacement"! After doing a bunch of research (and also ignoring some well-meaning advice :smile I decided to buy a used EVGA 8600 GT 256MB DDR3 off of eBay, which I scooped up for a little over $30. The reviews for the thing said that my lowly Dell PSU would be up to the task even though it was contrary to popular opinion around here, but I decided it was worth the risk, especially because it was so cheap!

I just installed it earlier today and the results thus far have been great. Plugged it right in and got the latest drivers (182.06). 3DMark06 went from 1896 to 5323(!), temps are holding at ~60C, and stress testing was successful. Tried out a few games and everything seems to be OK!

Not sure if I'll run into any long-term problems because of the PSU, temps, or the fact that it's used, but it's sure working out great right now! Thanks for all your help everyone!


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## Echo259 (Mar 7, 2009)

Hey. I was looking to update my video card and found this post very helpful so I decided to contribute. After reading this post and doing my research I picked a BGF Geforce 9400 GT 516mb video card. I found it on sale for $49 on newegg.com and if you live by a mircocenter they have it on sale for $54.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143153

I made this decision because I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a 4 year old computer. I mainly play RTS and TBS so I didn't need a lot of power.
My original system:
Dell Dimension 9100
P4 3.0ghz
1gb Ram
Nvidia GeForce 6800 256mb

New set up:
P4 3.0ghz
3gb Ram
BFG GeForce 9400 gt 512mb

I reason I updated is because of Empire Total War. My old system met min system requirements but could barely run the game (even on low). With my upgrades I'm able to run it on max graphics. 

Game system requirement:
2.4ghz
1gb (xp) 2gb (vista) Ram
256gb video card.


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## Echo259 (Mar 7, 2009)

FYI: I'm new at this. I'm only posting what I did that seemed to work. If someone else says there's something wrong with my setup please listen to them instead.


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