What graphics cards will work in my system?

i have a dell dimension 5150 with a geforce 7300LE currently. i would like to get a new card preferabley below £100.


The problem is that i can not find any with direct x 10 that will phisically fit (card is too long).


i need PCI-E and i have a 305watt power supply.


Thanks.

What graphics cards will work in my system?
I would go for the EVGA GeForce 8600GTS with 512MB 128-bit GDDR3. It's $210 right now @ Newegg.com, minus a $20 rebate the final price is $190. It is DirectX 10 and HDCP ready. Its length is 9" and height is 4.76" (the same as most of their high-end cards).


I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the DirectX 10 factor. I'm playing Lost Planet with a similar 8600 GTS using DirectX 9 and I can't imagine the picture quality being any better; it's like playing a true VIDEO game. You'll be able to play anything available for several years to come with this card. And down the road, if you want more power, then just get a dual-PCIe board and another 8600 GTS for twice the power!
Reply:First, the ATI x1k series of cards is DX9 only. The Xenos GPU (the video card in the Xbox360) isn't DX10 either. It supports many DX10 features, but it is NOT DX10 compatible. For example, it lacks any form of geometry shaders. It does have a unified shader architecture, but thats about it.





Second, you don't need a DX10 card to run Aero glass. It requires a DX9 video card.





To the OP, I'm sure you can find a number of good choices, but you need to change your thinking a bit. First, unless you get the 8800GTS or better, there aren't really any other DX10 cards that will provide playable frame rates while using DX10. Look at a review of the 8600GT series of cards. When using DX10, these cards are simply to weak to get near 60FPS. In addition, unless you are running Vista, you can't use DX10 anyways.





So what cards does that leave? With the 305W dell PSU, not many. It lacks the power needed to drive one of the x1950pros, which is one of the better DX9 video cards. About the best you could probably get is a 7900GS or a 7600GT. Either of these would be good. If the difference in price is small enough, then you could get the 8600GT, just don't expect to play DX10 games with it.
Reply:you could probably use any low end ATI Radeon X series card although they do not advertise that they are direct x 10 compatible these cards were all released after ATI was awarded the contract for the Xbox 360 which is direct X 10 compatible. My PC motherboard has built in Radeon X300 graphics and it ran Windows Vista Ultimate with no issues, which requires a direct X 10 card for the aero effects





I would also recommend upgrading your power supply to one that will support a higher end graphics card. most new graphics cards have additional power requirements that a 305W power supply will likely not support.