Ben has just downloaded the latest Dr Who game from the BBC website, but it won't run on the old 'puter.

It's a Dell Dimension 1100 and the beeb is saying I need a graphics card:-

"Graphics Card: 100% DirectX 9 or above compatible. 128 Mb memory. Pixel Shader 2.0 or above with the latest drivers for your card."

Anyone got one spare that they no longer need? Or any links to something that I can buy on ebay that will work?

Cheers

Mike

DOCTOR WH0 !

nvidia 6***, 7*** and 8*** series cards or newer would be a good bet
and shouldn't cost you much - try to get one that a *600 or higher

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units




I've got an ASUS 7600 GS (nivida) with 256Mb that needs an AGP 8x plug - that any good to you ? linky

but from what I can find so far - you might need a PCI card (not AGP or PCI-E)
and decent cards haven't been made on PCI for a very long time

to be honest if your old machine has a celeron, limited ram etc.... you'd be better of with a newer machine

[Edited on 6/6/2010 by mcerd1]

your a day to late i upgraded mine yesterday and took the old one down the tip with a load of other stuff. would have run that easily

Got a couple here, never used still in boxes.

A Gigabyte Radeon HD2400XT and an Asus EN7300GT Silent.

Both PCIE

[Edited on 6/6/10 by NigeEss]

Sadly I think you could be out of luck here, from what I can find out the Dell Dimension 1100 has no AGP port for a graphics card, just a few PCI ports (not the modern PCI-E slots).

About the best you could do is to try and find something like a GeForce FX5200, FX5500 or FX5700 with a PCI interface. These are all old cards, and the PCI bus really restricts performance, but they are DirectX 9.0 cards. They aren't very common though, very few PCI graphics cards were made after AGP became popular, but they do turn up on eBay occasionally.

quote:

---

Originally posted by mcerd1
to be honest if your old machine has a celeron, limited ram etc.... you'd be better of with a newer machine

---

Thanks guys.

I know the machine is old, but setting a new one up on the network / emails etc is cost prohibitive.

Would this fit the bill? Ebay card>

Mike

Sadly the 9250 is not a DirectX 9 card. If you can find one, an X1300 was available from one vendor with a PCI interface and was a good card in it's day. I suspect you will struggle to find one though.

However, I had forgotten about the Geforce 6200, this is the card you want!

My only slight concern is whether the PSU in your machine is up to the job. The 6200 isn't a huge power hog, and Dell tend to include reasonable good quality PSUs in their systems so you will probably be fine.

Thanks everyone! Bought that one, so we'll see what happens when it arrives.

Is it just a case of opening the case, slotting it in and running the install CD?

Mike

There may be a setting in the BIOS to determine which is the primary graphics card, the settings are usualy AGP and PCI, so you should set this to PCI.

Download the latest drivers from NIVIDA, they are regularly updated so the ones on the disk are almost certain to be very out of date. Drivers can make a very big difference in terms of performance and compatibility when running 3D stuff.