Help!

hi all, I really needed to pick your brains as im totally baffled with this.

I currently run an ATI Radeon X300 256mb PCI-E graphics but am upgrading tommorow to a Gigabyte Radeon HD 4350 650MHZ 512MB graphics card.

Ive found my PCI Express Slot is compliant with my needs and my PSU is at the minimum of 400W.

however I dont know if it would run anyway due to my CPU being an AMD Sempron 2800+ Single Core CPU.

I'd really like to know from you wizards if I would be able to run this card on my current rig as i do game on it almost daily and the X300 just doesn't cut it with regards to openbve and Richard Burns Rally.

help?

Yes the card would run.

brilliant, have you tested this card in a 1.6Ghz single core Sempron 2800+ per chance?

and would the performance be any better than the cruddy Radeon X300 I currently own lol

did i read right that the minimum power supply would need to be 400W or is it 300W, ive read various websites and some say 400 and others say 300 which really baffles me

also, I just want to make 100% certain that it wont blow my cpu as the main site doesnt mention a sempron being compatible lol

I have tested the HD 4350, in fact I have a review of one going up on my site shortly. It is a good card, but its not really a gaming card. It'll double your performance over the x300, you can see how they stack up side by side by looking here, and while its clear the HD 4350 is a superior card, I think if you are interested in getting better gaming performance, you could afford to look a bit higher end...assuming your budget allows for it. Like I said, dont get me wrong it is a solid upgrade but if you are shopping online, even $10-$20 extra can take you a long way.

As for limitations, the HD 4350 is fed by the PCI Express X16 slot, it does not require any additional power from the power supply. Even though the packaging may suggest a 300 or 400w power supply, the reality is the card itself is only going to consume about 25-30w, which is less than half of what the PCI Express X16 slot can provide.
My workstation, which I use as a testing platform for new hardware, consumed a peak of 205 watts while pushing the system to its limits. And this is the entire PC equipped with a 3.4gh E5200, 4gb DDR2 800, 2x 74gb WD raptors, along with the HD 4350, so I really wouldnt worry too much in your case.

Your CPU shouldnt be much of a limiting factor either, I would maintain that you are in good hands at this point. The CPU has nothing to do with compatibility with graphics cards. There is no risk of your system rejecting a video card simply because of the type of CPU you are using, it just doesnt work that way. They may list certain types of processors as "recommended" but really thats just another way of saying "hey its what we used". You can see the same thing on a lot of games as well, might say "Intel Pentium 4 3.2ghz" as a recommended cpu, but in reality that chip will be about as fast for gaming as a 1.8ghz core-based celeron...which you can get for $40 retail.

I think you will be quite happy, you will get a solid performance boost and shouln't have any trouble getting things going

wow thats smashing will definitely buy this card in the morning then, i do tend to play openbve a lot recently and on the X300 the graphics appear choppy on the more detailed routes.

funny actually you mention about games requiring a certain speed cpu though, I run call of duty 4 on my pc and the minimum i believe was 1.8Ghz whilst I am running a 1.6 and even though it is single core the performance was very decent, of course I had to set graphics settings to low but even then the detail for me was phenomenal.

I really appreciate your feedback on this and will definitely post a response on how it all went and thanks once again to all who answered my question, I wasn't looking forward to the 2nd option of getting a geforce

I've always been an Ati guy and always will stick with the Ati's due to how well they perform against Nvidia cards.

thanks very much guys

well once again I would stress that you understand the limitations of these cards. These are lower end cards and though they well suited to many games, if gaming is your main concern you really want to look at something like the HD 4650 from ATI, models such as this can be had for $50 upfront, and drop to $40 after rebate...a price that is only about $10-$15 more than the average HD 4350. The HD 4650 is significantly faster, as you can infer here by comparing the 4350 and 4650 side by side. Basically for that little bit more you get 3x the memory bandwidth, 4x the shader processing power, 2x the pixel fill rate, and 4x the texture fill rate. These numbers translate in to much higher performance and is ideal for gaming where as the lower end cards are more for general purpose systems that do a little bit of gaming on the side.

The HD 4650 will work in your system, it consumes more power, but is still well within the limits of what the PCI Express slot can provide - the card does not need any external power. Worth the extra money in my opinion.

cheers for that, i did in the end buy the HD 4350 and the performance over the old X300 was very instantly recogniseable under openbve, previously on X300 I could run the game reasonably well on the low-mid settings but after fitting the new card i wanted to push it a bit, and ran openbve under maximum settings just to see how far i could push the boat out regarding that game, other games ive tested included gta san andreas, richard burns rally, rail simulator, MSTS amongst a few others such as enter the matrix the path of neo, i really really appreciate your help on this.