shopping 4 new card

Hello people

I am currently shopping around for a new Graphic/Video card. Unfortunately my knowledge in this area is quite limited.

*******************These are my current system specs******************

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Windows 7 Home Premium, 64Bit

ACPI x64-based PC Motherboard

Intel Core i7-2600 processor(8MB Cache, 3.4GHz)

8GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz

ATI Radeon HD 5670 1GB GDDR5

1TB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
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What i need to know is how do i determine if a card is compatible with my system.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

You can put in anything you want as long as it will fit in the case, have sufficient enough power supply, and what your budget allows.

Shadowjk said:

From Your System Model found in your System Specs you have 2 PCI-e Slots

Dell XPS 8300 review | Desktop PCs | Reviews | PC Pro

stormy13 is correct you can place any Graphics with the correct Power

The slot type is the only thing you will need to worry about if your PSU is powerful enough (Should Be)

You may fit a Graphics card that has the following slot types on them

• PCI-e x16
• PCI-e x1

   Note

The last number is not the number of slots but the size and speed of the PCI-e Slot

Hope This Helps,
Josh

Hmm I don't know, pretty much all pre-built PC's I've seen have somewhat weak PSUs for mid/high end dedicated graphics cards.

I think dell gives a power supply with enough juice to run the current setup, so you might want to check exactly how much you have to work with... I had a dell and found out the power supply was 275W which is clearly not enough for a high end discrete card, even mid level cards that have their own power connectors.

460W according to the specs for the XPS 8300,

Dell XPS 8300 Details | Dell

Should be enough for most but the high end power hungry cards, assuming it has a decent 12V rail(s).

According to the user guide:

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...n/SG/sg_en.pdf

the machine is available with an nVidia GTX 460, or an AMD Radeon HD 5870.

(There's nothing there about optional power supplies to support them.)

That suggests that its PSU is capable. (It may not be up to the 300W cards.)

you can put just about any card into that rig as long as it fits. If you get a high end card you have to get a new psu some thing around 850w+ will allow you to put a fairly high end card into that rig. Do not buy a cheap psu spend the cash on a good one so it will last. I bought some crappy no name psu in my time and they drove me nuts with problems when under a full load.
You will be amazed at some of the problems you can run into just buy under powering your rig. Dells is no different then any other PC manufacturer out their they will give you a psu that can handle the options it came with but you don’t have a lot of leeway and if you tried to put a 480 or 280 card in that right and it fit you will have to get a new psu.

Thanks for information everyone, exactly the info i needed.