Opinion Wanted new video card

[Lab Rat 3947]

my computer is an old XPS400. According to Dell the largest PS upgrade is 650W, which i purchased and installed.
The video card I'm looking at is the nVidia GTX 660 Ti.
Looking for opinions about this card.   

[Lab Rat 3947]

my computer is a Dell XPS400, i just upgraded the PS to 650w, the max for my puter, according to Dell.
I'm looking at the nVidia 660 Ti for my video upgrade.
any comments on my choice would be appreciated?   

[gyrene81]

that's a lot of video card to be putting into such an old computer. the main benefit would be to run 3 monitors but, i doubt the rest of the system could handle the load. gonna want to measure the internal clearance too. appears zotac has the shortest model at 7.5 inches long and asus the longest at 10.7 inches long.

[Denniss]

There's no maximum for a PSU to be installed in a computer. Is your PSU a branded, quality PSU or soemthing you grabbed for cheap from Ebay?
The GTX660 could be a good choice but also requires a good quality PSU.

[Ripley]

my computer is an old XPS400. According to Dell the largest PS upgrade is 650W, which i purchased and installed.
The video card I'm looking at is the nVidia GTX 660 Ti.
Looking for opinions about this card.   

Not a chance. You would be wasting your money unless you intend on buying a new pc to put that graphics card in sometime soon down the road.

Your computer, assuming it has its max of 4 gb of ram, would be bottlenecked not only by its processor, but by the fact that the PCI-Express slot you have is a GEN1, while the 660 is a PCI-e 3.0 card. To be honest I'm not even sure if a PCI-e 3.0 card will work in 1.0 slot. I will assume it would, but you wont get anything NEAR what the card is actually capable of doing in that computer. EDIT: PCI-e 3.0 cards SHOULD be backwards compatible with 1.0 slots, however its completely dependant on the motherboard and its BIOS and isn't garunteed.

What do you have for a graphics card right now?

In your situation I would probably start searching for a new computer before you made that purchase.

[Lab Rat 3947]

256MB nVidia GeForce 7300LE is what I'm currently using.   

[Lab Rat 3947]

PSU came from Dell.

Planning new computer build around next tax refund time 

[Ripley]

The 8800 gtx was a nice pci-e 1.0 card, I still have a friend that uses 2 of them SLI in his machine. If you absolutely need an upgrade right now, look for one of them. They should be fairly cheap and are a decent upgrade to what you have now (well for a pci-e 1.0 slot i mean). Save the rest of your money for your full system upgrade. It'll make it that much sweeter when the time comes 

[BoilerDown]

I have to agree with what's been said, for your older computer, a top of the line video card isn't a good match for your CPU.  Unless you plan to upgrade the CPU soon, which will probably require a bunch of other upgrades, like motherboard, memory, etc.

I would look for something cheap in the Aces High Classifieds, from a GeForce 9800 to a GTX 260.  If you can't find anything, then Newegg has the 550Ti for $100.  I wouldn't worry about the Pci-E slot, as long as its a x8 or x16, it'll work fine regardless if its a 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0.  Make sure you put it into the slot designed for video cards, by all rights it should be a x16 slot.

As for the memory on the video card, unless you're running a 64 bit OS, you want to keep your video card memory down to 1MB or less.  Another reason to not go crazy with one of the new 660 Ti s.

Newegg has a refurbished GTX280 for $100 at the moment.  I'd be wary of that, because the big second number means its a power-hungry beast of a video card.  You'll want to be sure of your power supply first.  Otherwise it seems like a pretty decent deal, but I'm not sure how it compares to a 550 Ti in Aces High.  Often with Nvidia video cards, the second number is more important than the first, so for example, a GTX480 will outperform a GTX640.  But as the generations get further apart, its harder to say for sure.

[Denniss]

Better don't buy outdated generation cards, especially not former high-end models. Just not enough performance per Watt.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161376
-> current generation low-end card but still a lot faster than your current one. ~20W + passive cooling

[BoilerDown]

Better don't buy outdated generation cards, especially not former high-end models. Just not enough performance per Watt.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161376
-> current generation low-end card but still a lot faster than your current one. ~20W + passive cooling

Performance per watt?  A nice thing, but how about some just-plain-performance?  That card is hopelessly obsolete while its new.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6450-review/3

I have to strongly disagree with Denniss' advice.

[gyrene81]

I have to strongly disagree with Denniss' advice.

ya same here...

[Denniss]

For plain performace you'll need a new computer or at least a lot more computing power than the P4 offers. At best the P4 is able to feed current 50-60$ cards with sufficient data and even those are faster than many power-hungry old generation cards.

[Lab Rat 3947]

I think I'll go with 550Ti.
The card I do have can't handle a large group. My FPS takes a huge hit in those situations. And with upcoming DGSII coming up I need a quick cheap fix.
Thanx for all the replies.