Can I run this Video Card?

Computer Forum Video Cards, Displays and TV Tuners
1

Hi.

Currently in my Dell Dimension E520 (I customized it), I have 2 gigs of ram, a dual core 2.8ghz processor, and a PCI-E Radeon X1300/x1550 pro (According to Dxdiag, at least.)

This Christmas I got a bunch of new, Next Gen games, and I want to be able to get the most out of them.

My current card isn’t quite cutting it, so I want to get something new, under $250.

I’m looking at a Nvidia GeForce 8800GT.

However, I noticed that this Card uses a PCI-E 2.0 slot, whereas my computer supports A PCI-E x16 slot.

So my question:

  1. Can I still use that card?
  2. How will it run?
  3. Is an X16 slot better than a 2.0, or vice versa?
  4. If this card won’t run games like Crysis well on my computer, what will?
  5. And finally, what’s the difference between x16 and 2.0?
  6. Can I get any better cards for under $250?
  7. EDIT: Uh oh.. My PSU is only 305w. Can I still get this card?

(Don’t worry if you can’t answer every question :smiley: )

2

You can get a 256MB XFX 8800gt for about $100. With this deal you could play considerably faster but know that you can’t reach the full potential of an 8800 with you CPU. This card should work on any PCI-E slot. PCI-E 2.0 is expected to be better, but i don’t know too much about PCI-E 2.0.

3

PCI-ex 2.0 will utilize a 32x bandwidth, but it is backwards compatible with 1.0 . Where it stands GPUs wouldn’t even utilize the full bandwidth so it’s all just going to be a gimmick anyways.