Good PCI card?

[divsky]

My wife has an old Dell computer ([URL=" [/URL]) that she uses only for E-mail, web browsing and World of Warcraft, which we play together.

Recently the game and more recently the computer have been crashing when she plays, and I'm 90% sure that the problem is with her old PCI graphics card. (A Sapphire Radeon ..X1350 I think?)

Anyways, I want get a new PCI graphics card. It needs to be fairly cheap - but I don't want it breaking on me, because this last video card only lasted for 12 months. It also needs to get reasonably good performance with World of Warcraft so we can continue playing together. Any suggestions from this forum on what would be a good deal?

 

[Big B]

That X1350 may be about the top-end PCI card you can get. Now, PCI Express (PCIe) is an entirely different beast and completely incompatible with PCI. If you want a better video card, you'll need to upgrade the motherboard at the very least, and likely the CPU, RAM, and power supply. Basically, PCI and AGP are being shuffled away in favor of PCIe.

I don't think the video card would be where I'd look for the problem. I would look at the RAM with Memtest (download it for CD or floppy to burn or make a floppy) and reboot with the disk in the system. Let it run for about an hour or longer. If there are any errors, you probably have a stick that's going bad.
Second thing to look into is the system cooling. I would make sure that there isn't a dust buildup inside the box. If there is, a can of compressed air is around $5. Pay attention around the CPU cooler as dust tends to accumulate in the heatsink fins and CPU fan blades.

Start there and see what you come up with.