Graphics card headache

[bobby46]

I want to upgrade an old office PC (Gateway E 2000) to do casual gaming at low resolution (1024x768 or 800x600).
All games are 5 years old and older. Some examples:
Unreal Tournament
Doom3
Serious Sam second encounter

The onboard intel "extreme" gives choppy motion even at 800x600!

There are many restrictions:
2.2g celeron, 768mb ram
pci low profile slot with low profile bracket
only a 160 watt P.S.
Gateway lit. recommends ATI over Nvidia (chipset incompatibilities?)
DX9 capable if possible

I'm not a frame-rate fanatic, but don't want to waste cash for minimal improvement. Is the ATI 7000 w/64mb too lowball for this application? Any better suggestions?

[glc]

Not with a 160 watt PSU. That's a SFX form factor with a custom cradle, and not easily upgradeable. The cheapest low profile PCI card that I can find that supports DX9 is a GeForce 6200 at 87 bucks, way overpriced, and the PSU can't handle it.

Sorry, but you don't have a suitable platform for what you want to do.

[bobby46]

Thanks
You saved me from countless hours of stubborn further research.
Just one thing...... The ATI 7000 with 64mb memory is cheap. Would that give me some (limited) gaming capability without overworking the dinky P.S.?
Small wattage help, but l already pulled out the useless 56k modem card.

[glc]

Can you get a low profile 7000 with a half height bracket? Post a link, please.

Remember that the 7000 is only a DX7 card. It wasn't a good gamer even when it was new.

[bobby46]

On second look, the picture I saw was streched and misleading. The 7000 is full height.

The PC is a hand-me-down I hoped to beef up for a family member. Nothing lost but time; thanks for yours!

[bobby46]

Stumbled upon this ATI 7000 at ebay:


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWA:IT&ih=002


This should fit. Is there any way to check the extra wattage this pulls?
Would it help if I disconnected the floppy drive?

[glc]

I suppose you could try it, but honestly, it's probably no better than the integrated graphics because there's no hardware DX9 support. Your money may be better spent scrounging up some more ram, it will hold up to 2gb, it takes standard DDR-333.

[bobby46]

Blame ebay for introducing more options. Here's a card with more guts.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWA:IT&ih=022

On one hand I could have a decent performing pc for less than 100 bucks.
On the other hand, I could get a burning smell from the 160 watt P.S.

Maybe small help, but supplied modem and floppy are removed, and this card has no fan.
Wish I knew the wattage of these graphics cards!

Has anyone tried a similar thing?

[glc]

That card needs a 300 watt PSU. Think you could hack this into the case?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151058

You still would need to max out the ram to make it all worth it, and now you are getting into territory where you would be better off stripping the thing for parts and cobbling something else together.

[bobby46]

Spot-on feedback............

I can see how the mod could be accomplished. But the question is.........WHY?
Graphics +300w supply +RAM cost takes us into ebay bidding territory for a ready-made P4 roomy tower with less chance of heat issues.

Case closed (really, this time)