Friend of mine wants to upgrade his graphics card on his gateway...

[Jayce]

Long story short. Buddy of mine came to me with a 2 year old gateway saying his computer is lagging during certain games (not online games). He upgraded his RAM to 1 gb (maximum supported) a few months ago, so he assumed it was the graphics card, also because the graphics card is 32mb and 32mb is the MINIMUM required by the game specs (64mb recommended).

I'm worried about what to suggest for him, mostly because of it being a gateway and those ****ing proprietary ******** they pull over. Somebody told me as long as the graphics card doesn't require a power source hookup (because those are proprietary) that it should be okay.

Here is the graphics card I was looking at. 256mb AGP GeForce 6200.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150107

Here is a picture of the inside of their tower.

So not only am I worried about proprietary connectors and whatnot, but I'm also worried about the power supply. Will it hold up, going from a 32mb graphics card to a 256? Will it be okay? Will it ****ing die by saturday?

 

[fuz_master]

It looks like he has an AGP slot and if his card is a 32MB ram its Power Supply is probably sh*t so he should either stick with the card he already has or get a new Power Supply and get the new card. But to be honest i would get a new comp.

 

[Jayce]

Would a 256 meg card make it suffer that much? How about a 128?

 

[bonehelm]

he has an AGP slot? then you should get him a 6800GS.

power supply wise, anything that gives more than or 25A on 12 rail and about 400W should be fine.

 

[Nukem]

But then you have to worry about the PSU fitting in the case. Even with a 6200, a 350w PSU would work... Antec or Coolmax makes a micro ATX psu that would fit into any pre-built system and if I remember correctly it has 20/22 on the 12V side, so that would work... But it also depends on the price range you have to work with. You can even find a 6800 for about the same price range as a 6200 sometimes in the newegg clearance/referb section. why pay for a new card, if you can get one for cheaper.
Just my 2.5 cents

 

[Jayce]

What I'm wondering is if the stock PSU will handle it... I know he's not going to want to go all out with a new power supply and everything. He just got a gig of ram, new monitor, and wants a new graphics card now. If he can just get this one game to stop freezing so he can happily play it (which is the graphics card's fault) then he'll be fine for years...

 

[magouster]

Okay, if going for the 6200, then try to find a 128MB one, cause there is no way the GF6200 will ever use that much memory. It wont be able to play games that require that much memory anyway. So save the money, and just get a cheaper 128MB GF6200. Just my opinion though, use it, don't use it.

 

[Jorsoft]

His current PSU probably isn't more than 300W and it'll be tough to upgrade it as Gateway's psu's are generally proprietary and oddly shaped. To use a generic power supply he'd probably have to cut up his case. My own PSU is roughly 300 watts and I can run an overclocked BFG Geforce 5600 FX 256mb with no problems, I don't see why your friend wouldn't be able to run a 6200 (I agree, get the 128mb if it's cheaper).

 

[NosBoost300]

if a 19 amp psu can run a 6800 gs (my compaq), then i'm sure the psu in it will run a 6200 no problem