What would be a decent graphics card for my PC?

[BUZ]

Looking to upgrade my graphics card and was wondering if I could get some recommendations on a decent mid grade card? This is a for a dell 580 desktop i3 540 with 8gb ram, will be mostly used for watching HD movies, netflix etc. My currect card that came with the desktop is an Nvidia Geforce 310, from what I can tell it seems to be a pretty junky card and also seems to run hot. Been looking quite a bit at newegg however I really don't know which one would be my best bet.

Budget $50 - $100

THANKS!

 

[bobkn]

You'd be limited by the 300W power supply in that model.

Dell recommends:

Graphics Cards : Computer Components | Dell

They all appear to be low-profile cards. At a guess the Radeon 4650 is the best that you can do. Dell's price is high. Newegg lists two less expensive ones, but they appear to be out of stock at the moment.

I'm not sure whether any graphics card upgrade would be helpful if watching movies is the main purpose.

 

[stormy13]

Without changing the power supply,

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100323L Radeon HD 6570 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

Cheaper than anything from Dell (they're always overpriced unless they're having a sale of some kind); faster than the 4670 with similar power requirements (a bit less actually).

Is your 580 the 580 or 580s (slim case)? If it is the regular 580,

Inspiron 580 Desktop Details | Dell Canada

then if you want to go with a more powerful card that requires a power supply upgrade, then you're not limited in what you can get as the regular 580 takes a standard ATX power supply.

 

[bobkn]

Without changing the power supply,

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100323L Radeon HD 6570 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

Somehow I missed that chipset when searching for low-profile cards. It's a considerably better card than the 4650. (128 bit path to VRAM, more processing pipelines.)

Sapphire states that they want a 400W PSU for either a 4650 or 6570 card, but that seems excessive. (Both cards get all their power through the PCI-E slot, so they draw less than 75W.)

 

[BUZ]

Without changing the power supply,

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100323L Radeon HD 6570 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

Cheaper than anything from Dell (they're always overpriced unless they're having a sale of some kind); faster than the 4670 with similar power requirements (a bit less actually).

Is your 580 the 580 or 580s (slim case)? If it is the regular 580,

Inspiron 580 Desktop Details | Dell Canada

then if you want to go with a more powerful card that requires a power supply upgrade, then you're not limited in what you can get as the regular 580 takes a standard ATX power supply.

So the Radeon HD 6570 in your link will work fine with a 300w power supply? Was looking up info on the 580 and it looks like it has PCIex2.0 not 2.1, will that make any difference or are they somehow compatible with each other?

The 580 is the non-slim version.

 

[stormy13]

No promises, but it should as Dell has a tendency lately from what I have seen to actually understate the specs of their power supplies; as in they say it is a 300W on the label, but is more like a 325-350W.

The PCI-E 2.0/2.1 shouldn't matter as they are supposed to be backwards compatible with each other.