Specification for a new Graphics Card

[mojomoh]

Hi - new to this so bear with me.
I have a Dell Dimension 4600 with Nvidia Feforce4 MX420 card.

I want to upgrade the card but have no idea what specs to look for - best i can see I need an AGP card but 4X 8X or what I have no idea.

I just need to improve overall performance of the system and it will mostly be doing digital photo processing, little or no gaming.

Any clues anyone?

[wonderlust]

Is the case a full size case or a slimline?

Some Dells only take low profile cards.

As you are doing Graphics work ATI are supposed to have better image quality, although Matrox is reportedly better, with NVidia the worse of the three.

If you are planning to game at all then forget the Matrox cards

[mojomoh]

Think its full size - 37cm high by 18cm wide or thereabouts.

Just discovered its a Dell motherboard supporting AGP4X

[marsey99]

o0

[SimCity]

Personally, I'd take that money to spend on a new card and save up for a cheap up-to-date budget system IMO

But otherwise, what is your budget on this new agp card?

Sim

[mojomoh]

Yep - I'm sort of getting to that conclusion myself. Ordred new RAM and that'll make a big difference I hope as it's only got 512mb at the mo.

Trouble is I hate the thought of binning a perfectly good puter just for a bit of extra grunt.

I guess what I really need to know is whether editing and buggering about with digi photos is more a function of memory or graphics card power.

If I can get a reasonable improvement for £50 or so then I'll go for it - otherwise it goes in to the new puter pot

[wonderlust]

What sort of Ram?

I just picked up 2 x 512Mb Elixir DDR 400 for £7 all in (yet another Fleabay bargain :))

[mojomoh]

Went with Crucial - more money but they deliver to France and have been very reliable in the past

[marsey99]

for editing pics you will want more ram and a fast cpu, gpu has little to do with it tbh, faster hard drives help too.

[coalbox]

Problem with Dell rigs is that there is usually little that you can do to upgrade them.As wonderlust says most Dells only take single slot cards & the latest cards from the late 7000's upwards require 2 slots because of the cooling blocks.Even if you have 2 slots available you'll probably find the cpu cooler will get in the way.I would use the Dell as an internet pc & not spend any more money on it but save it for a rig that can be upgraded as is neccessary in the future.

[coiler]

Spend £100 and get 2gb DDR2, an Intel Core 2 Duo e2140 (can easiliy reach 3ghz!) and a intel board.

THEN save up for a half decent gfx card.

The above will put you on a much better base and perfomance for price vs updating the antique you have at the moment :)

[marsey99]

will any modern gpu even work in agp x4?

[wonderlust]

Yes, the only thing to watch is that older cards are IIRC 3.3v and newer ones are 1.5v.

If designed correctly they should have a slot in the connector to stop the wrong cards being plugged in.

[Mul.]

Either my memory is playing tricks on me but the Dimension 4600 uses the Intel 865G chipset which actually supports full AGP 8x. Any major graphics card upgrade will be held back by the CPU and may not work due to the 250W PSU that the system uses.

You're probably looking at a whole new rig but whats your full system specs?

For the improvements you're after, it's looking like more of a CPU/RAM thing.