Comp help/advice
By
Blue_Centurion,
Posted on: 2012-01-31 10:54 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
I'm 95% sure this is my Dell Specs
http://support.dell.com/support/edoc....htm#wp1052310
It looks like I need a PCI slot, and it has one. Both the board and hte card are from the right Era (both are ancient by todays standards) so I'm giving myself a 50/50 that it will fit in physically. The next big question s power supply. The GeForce 8800 GT is actually a power miser by GeForce standards it seems, but I am still unsure if I can drive it with this box. I am 99% sure I can get drivers if it will physically work. Seriously, any help would be great.
Check the power supply in the machine.
The DV051/3100/E310 line are entry level systems and may have a PSU only barely powerful enough for the machine as it is.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Power
DC power supply:Wattage.230 W
Heat dissipation
785 BTU/hr
NOTE: Heat dissipation is calculated based upon the power supply wattage rating.
Voltage (see the safety instructions located in the Product Information Guide for important voltage setting information)
90 to 135 V and 180 to 265 V at 50/60 Hz
My problem is I do not know how much it is using without the card. The card uses 175w max
PSU is sub-par for the 8800GT.
8800GT's specs call for a 400W PSU (minimum) that's capable of 22 Amps on the 12 Volt rail.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Does that mean a no go? Also, i have spent a half hour searching to see if the PCI is the same type and will fit and I am no closer to an answer...
And lastly, you are saying 400w PSU but the site I have says 105W max
According to a site ( i had the ultra at 175, this is much less!) These are the power draw specs on the 8800 GT
nVidia GeForce 8800 GT
At A Glance
Manufacturer: nVidia
Series: GeForce 8
GPU: G92
Release Date: 2007-10-29
Interface: PCI-E 2.0 x16
Core Clock: 600 MHz
Shader Clock: 1500 MHz
Memory Clock: 900 MHz (1800 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 57.6 GB/sec
FLOPS: 336 GFLOPS
Pixel Fill Rate: 9600 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 33600 MTexels/sec
Details
Max Power Draw: 105 W
Noise Level: Moderate
Framebuffer: 256,512,1024,2048 MB
Memory Type: GDDR3
Memory Bus Type: 64x4 (256 bit)
DirectX Compliance: 10.0
OpenGL Compliance: 2.1
PS/VS Version: 4.0/4.0
Process: 65 nm
Shader Processors: 112 (128)
Pipeline Layout: Scalar MADD+MUL
Texture Units: 56 (64)
Raster Operators 16
The 8800 is a decent card and capable of ultra mode although certainly not maxed out. I ran for some time with a 8800 GTS which is the model below yours although you don't say whether its the 512Mb or the 640Mb version - the 512 is the later model and superior card despite having less memory.
They use a PCIe interface (white slot - although later MB tend to vary the colour - with a clip on the end) although I believe there were some AGP (brown slot) models also, I would think a PCI version (white slot no clip) is unlikely.
The 8800 and 9800 series were almost identical (unless you owned one particular Dell) and the 9800GTX was die shrunk and rereleased as iirc the 265
I takes a dual slot cooler so you need to ensure you have a free slot next to your graphics card.
You almost certainly will need to upgrade your PSU though. a 230W one isn't going to last especially if its a cheap make. OTOH the blue flash you get when they blow can be quite impressive.
You might get away with a 400W but personally I wouldn't put anything below 600W into a PC these days which leaves some leeway for future upgrades.
That 105W is the power drawn by the card on its own the PSU also meeds to power the Motherboard, CPU, Memory, fans and drives + anything drawing power off of USB - those will add probably about another 150W to that figure. Then you need to factor in that you should only be running your PSU at up to ~50% load as its efficiency drops off rapidly after that. Higher temps also hit efficiency and high loads increase temps.
You should also consider that GPUs in particular will require that much power off of one power rail, whereas the rating of the PSU is spread over all of them.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
According to a site ( i had the ultra at 175, this is much less!) These are the power draw specs on the 8800 GT
|
The video card draws 105 watts, the cpu another 100 or so and you've got fans, hard disk, an optical drive, etc. That's why a 400w power supply is the minimum recommended. It's important to have a bit of wiggle room so that your power supply isn't worked to its limits every time you turn it on. If you shorten the life of your power supply, it could take the whole machine with it when it gives up.
Dell power supplies might be a proprietary form factor, so you might not be able to upgrade easily. I've not dealt with it, I might be wrong.
Here's a drive bay supplemental power supply that might do in a pinch, but I'd recommend you save the money for a new machine instead:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...047&CatId=1078
Good luck,
Jer
Quote:
No, the CARD should draw roughly 105W max. That's roughly 45% of your PSU's maximum draw.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Does that mean a no go? Also, i have spent a half hour searching to see if the PCI is the same type and will fit and I am no closer to an answer...
And lastly, you are saying 400w PSU but the site I have says 105W max |
Without factoring in any hard drives or peripherals besides:
- 8800GT
- P4
- 2 sticks of RAM
Tack in 1 SATA drive and an optical and you're pushing 220W. That's essentially running the PSU at 100%. You may be able to do it for a very short period. But you're going to kill the PSU quickly if you do.
Worse, the PSU isn't spec'ed for the amperage (22A on the 12V rail).
You'd really want something like this.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
I'm looking at the link thx. So, buying this power supply will fix the PSU problem and the specific power to the PCI problem? or the 22 amp on the 12v rail. sorry, really lost here. my few weeks electronic training was a very very long time ago. and last, do you know for sure this card will fit into this box or do i need to crack the case and eyeball it?
Basically with the 400W PSU shown, you'll be likely drawing somewhere around 250 Watts total for your system at max draw. That PSU will handle that with plenty of room to spare without running at levels that would shorten the PSU's life. It will also handle the necessary amperage.
As for will it fit? Get a ruler out.
The 8800 will require about 9 inches (228mm) of clearance.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
lol, no, I am still trying to figure if the slots are configured right. The last time I installed anything in a comp hardware wise is when I cracked the box on this one 4 years ago to put in 2 GB ram so CoV would load door missions without taking 5 minutes to do it.
The Docs say the machine has a PCI-E slot. 
Even with a better video card it still won't change the fact that the Pentium 4 was a hot power hungry slug of a CPU.
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K thx guys. I know a very competent and friendly guy that runs a comp fix-it shop. I'll have him install a PSU, the card, drivers, and maybe clean some registry errors as well. THat should get the old box set up as a good back up for another year or two. THanks.
We recently got a new comp (yeah) that is decent, but will not run CoH in Ultra. Got big tax money plans for that in a month or two. But that (for the 1st time) gave us 2 boxes and my wife joined the community, playing Premium and teaming with me. Our old tower is.... yeah.
Here is the situation and the question. A friend gave us a E-V3A E-GeForce 8800 GT and I was wondering if that would go into our old tower. It is a Dell Dimension DV051 ACPI MultiProcessor (Intel Pent4 3.06ghz) w 2gig ram (Win XP 2002) My main questions are 1) does this tower have enough power to run this graphics car 2) Does anyone know if it will physically fit in an old Dell Dimension 3) will the drivers install 4) is this a decent card for running CoH ps, it could hardly be any worse running the City than what it is now lol.
Any help is appreciated. My wife gets the new machine when we duo and it would be nice to not be fighting the old machine so much as I try to help her enjoy our wonderful game.