Gumpy Old Git wanting to upgrade a Graphics Card

[simtrain]

Hi Everyone,

Its been a long long time since I've played with upgrading a computer, so I'm asking for some help in choosing a cheap graphics card that would allow me to play with Trainz 12.

My PC is a HP Pavilion A6000

Specs are:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/ca/e...2133158-12133158-12133158-79732772.html?dnr=1

I basically want something that I can just plug in and go, that won't cost me a fortune, but will do the job.

Any help would be much appreciated!!



Regards


Steve aka Simtrain

 

[itareus]

Your PCs Power Supply Unit (PSU) will be the governing factor, unless you want to upgrade it that is. I have a feeling that the HP PSUs are pretty low powered, can you confirm the PSU rating?

I had a similar problem with my Dell (and the PSU is difficult to change on my model) so opted for an ATI Radeon HD4650 which has a low power requirement. (In fact I have a unused, boxed, spare one sitting on a shelf ... ). This was some months ago and there will have been changes to the available cards, worth checking http://www.tomshardware.com/ .

 

[sniper297]

You know, it's odd - I have two Dell XPS400 machines I bought right after I moved in 2005, when I was too busy to build my own, and didn't look at the specs too carefully. Turned out that model only came with a 375 watt power supply, and everything I read told me it was impossible to replace. Then I met the local computer shop owner, who sold me a generic 550 watt power supply - he said that altho the motherboards are impossible since the Dell tower case screw holes won't line up with industry standard, but most of the other components can easily be replaced with industry standard, including the power supply. Only thing to check is that the wire lead for the hard disk isn't too short, since Dell placed the hard drive bays a long long way from the power supply.

At the original poster, I'm looking at several different specs on your link - do you already have an actual video card, or one of the onboard video chips?