New Graphics Card

He said that a card without a cooling fan is going to heat up more. And that is pretty much the case....however it won't be heating up to the point that it kills itself or your machine. None of these cards will be suitable for any advanced gaming. And within your price range, I cannot find a card with a fan that is less than $40.

The lowest priced PCI card, supporting DX9, with 512MB RAM with a cooling fan is the $80 one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowIm...d%20-%20Retail

Even if you could find a powerful PCI card, it won't be $20-$40 and it will draw more power than your power supply in your computer will generate. I think the Dimension 3000 had a simple 200 watt power supply if I remember correctly.

Remember, there is always eBay where you can probably find a deal. However, I cannot sort quickly in eBay like I can on NewEgg..so I'm not going to scour eBay looking for a card with the specs that you need. I'll leave that up to you.

For aero you need at least 128MB of RAM, support DirectX 9 class graphics processor that supports a Windows Display Driver Model Driver, Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, and 32 bits per pixel.

Is the 8400 card better than my old one?

Intel [R]82865G

Ayo said:

Is the 8400 card better than my old one?

Intel [R]82865G

Anything is better than your onboard video. The Dell Dimension 3000 was one of the worst computers made by Dell as it was cheap and people scooped them up with grand plans to just upgrade them later, but when they opened them up they discovered the fact that they didn't have slots for AGP or PCI-Express and were pretty much stuck with crappy PCI video cards.

Sorry for wasting your time but I want to know if this one is good. It doesn't say pci express.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0018HHQ9C/ref=nosim/7240466-rg2304-00-20]Amazon.com: MSI NX8400GS-TD512EH nVidia GeForce 8400GS 512MB DVI S-Video PCIE Silent - Retail: Electronics[/ame]

Ayo said:

Sorry for wasting your time but I want to know if this one is good. It doesn't say pci express.
Amazon.com: MSI NX8400GS-TD512EH nVidia GeForce 8400GS 512MB DVI S-Video PCIE Silent - Retail: Electronics

It's no bother....but that is a PCI Express card as well. Notice in the description how it says PCIE....the E is the express part.

Okay I need to know if this one is good, compatible with my system, will work with the Aero interface.

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-256-P1-N400-LR-GeForce-6200-Graphics/dp/B001U3YIT0/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1250892496&sr=8-7]Amazon.com: EVGA 256-P1-N400-LR GeForce 6200 256 MB DDR2 PCI Graphics Card: Electronics[/ame]

It's going to be better than what you have. It's debatable whether it would be better than the 8400GS. I would expect the 8400 to be a faster card. However, I much prefer the brand eVGA to Sparkle. I've had numerous eVGA cards and they have always stood behind them.

I linked to pretty much the same card earlier from NewEgg...the difference is that for the same price, the NewEgg card has 512MB versus 256.
Newegg.com - EVGA 512-P1-N402-LR GeForce 6200 512MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI 2.1 Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

pparks1 said:

It's going to be better than what you have. It's debatable whether it would be better than the 8400GS. I would expect the 8400 to be a faster card. However, I much prefer the brand eVGA to Sparkle. I've had numerous eVGA cards and they have always stood behind them.

I linked to pretty much the same card earlier from NewEgg...the difference is that for the same price, the NewEgg card has 512MB versus 256.
Newegg.com - EVGA 512-P1-N402-LR GeForce 6200 512MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI 2.1 Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

Are you sure it will work with my cpu, the Aero interface? So it is the same thing except a little faster, or what?

Ayo said:

Are you sure it will work with my cpu, the Aero interface? So it is the same thing except a little faster, or what?

Everything will work with your CPU. It's the PCI slot on the motherboard that we have to stay compatible with.

The card from Amazon is the EVGA 256-P1-N400-LR model and the one from NewEgg is the EVGA 512-P1-N402-LR. So, they are pretty much the same from a graphics processing standpoint...the 512 model just has 2x as much RAM on it.

Yes, this card will support Aero. If you look at the link for NewEgg and look at the customer reviews, the 1st person is using this card to power a 3rd monitor on his Win7 64-bit machine to replace another card which wasn't compatible. That's a pretty good testament for you.

pparks1 said:

Everything will work with your CPU. It's the PCI slot on the motherboard that we have to stay compatible with.

The card from Amazon is the EVGA 256-P1-N400-LR model and the one from NewEgg is the EVGA 512-P1-N402-LR. So, they are pretty much the same from a graphics processing standpoint...the 512 model just has 2x as much RAM on it.

Yes, this card will support Aero. If you look at the link for NewEgg and look at the customer reviews, the 1st person is using this card to power a 3rd monitor on his Win7 64-bit machine to replace another card which wasn't compatible. That's a pretty good testament for you.

Thank you so much.