Graphics upgrade help ?

[Brian Johnson]

I have a Dell 4500 dimension running windows XP home edition, on a Pentium 4 with 512 meg of memory and a ATI Rage 3 graphics card that came with the computer.
I have installed Sierra's Nascar N2003 and the game runs at an astonishing 8 fps with all features turned off.
I know there are numerous upgrades that I can look into but have a budget of 150-200 for a new card.
I have heard that the NVIDIA Ti series is good as is the AMD stuff.
Can you guys make a recommendation?

Thanks

Brian

[juppy]

Hi Brian,
First of all, you need to make sure your computer has a "standard" size card in it. I'll be honest, I know absolutely nothing about the video card you said it came with so I don't know how big it is, but alot of times those pre-made computers (Dell, Compaq, HP) have proprietary components in them....meaning sometimes the cards may be half the size of normal cards and that's all that'll fit in the case. If it has a normal size card though, then yeah, that would likely help you quite a bit.
Yes, the Ti series is good. You can pick up a Ti4200 at Newegg.com for just over $100, or they have a Ti4800 for around $180.
To my knowledge AMD doesn't make video cards. You're probably thinking of ATI. Newegg has an ATI 9600 for $178 right now. Any of these cards would likely get you going pretty good, as the rest of your stuff ought to be able to handle that game pretty easily. hth

[Brian Johnson]

Thanks Juppy for help.

[Jim Baxter]

Brian,
Try and contact Dell support or cust. service and tell them you want to do a graphics card up-grade. There respnse may give you a clue as to what cards may fit.
Have your serial no. handy and they should be able to pull up a built list for your unit.
You could then shop for the card anywhere.