What is a good video card for my Dell OptiPlex 320?
by Guest Geek on November 6, 2009Q: I have a DELL OptiPlex 320 with an AIT chipset. About a year ago I was trying to upgrade my graphics card and tried several ATI, NVIDIA cards and none of them would work in my system. After taking it to several computer shops, I found a guy that got a Sapphire X300SE to work. Now I am wanting to upgrade to a better card and curious if any ATI card will now work in my system or will I have to do something different other than installing it?
Tags: video card
1) AGP or PCI-Express?
2) Is the reason all the other cards didn’t work because your computer case is really thin and you require a low profile card?
3) Why are you planning on upgrading the video card? Something specific you want to play?
Mark says: on November 7, 2009 at 9:14 am
PCI-Express x16, the computer case is a normal size tower and I want to play World of Warcraft. It has a Sapphire x300SE in it now and my frame rate is pretty low. I have 4GB of Ram and I have upgraded the power supply.
Rodman42866 says: on November 9, 2009 at 12:18 am
Okay, you should be able toss just about anything in there and be fine. I’d probably go with a Radeon 4850, should be able to find them for about $100 on-line. As you more forward and want better performance your next step would be a motherboard/cpu replacement.
Any idea of why other video cards wouldn’t work in your PC?
Mark says: on November 9, 2009 at 12:00 pm
I purchased several cards at Best Buy and each one would be not be recognized by the CPU. I called Dell and the tech on the phone told me that since it was an ATI motherboard, that only an ATI product would work. So then I tried several ATI products and still nothing. I took it into Circuit City’s computer department and told the guys there about my problem. After about 8 hours of trying they finally gave up.
I think the biggest problem was the CPU would not recognize the new card.
The guy that did actually get a card to work in it as closed his business so I cannot ask him what he did to get a card to work in it.
Rodman42866 says: on November 9, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Update on my situation…I bought an ATI Radeon HD 4350, PCI-E x16. I installed it into the PCI-E x16 slot, powered up my system, checked BIOS to make sure the onboard video was off and I got the windows loading screen and then it went black, just like the others that I tried before. I checked to make sure the card was seated correctly, booted once again, and after the Windows screen, it went black.
Not for sure what the computer tech did before to get the Sapphire X300 SE to work but after I pulled the new card out and placed the the X300 back in, my computer booted fine.
Rodman42866 says: on November 10, 2009 at 9:10 pm
That’s really strange. My only thought would be to remove the old drivers before removing the old card.
Mark says: on November 10, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Rodman, check out this thread: http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19251343/19407367.aspx
Mark says: on November 10, 2009 at 9:28 pm