Upgrading to merely non-terrible graphics card (that's simple to install).

Factual Questions
1

My computer came with an Nvidia GeForce 6150 SE video card, which pretty much sucks. I’d like to upgrade to something a little more acceptable; I don’t do any very graphics-intensive PC gaming, but I would like to be able to play somewhat older games like Civ 4: Colonization and IL-2 Sturmovik smoothly.

Obviously I’m looking for something cheap ($50 or less if at all possible), and I’m also looking for something that will be close to plug & play – anything that will require me to plug the card into my power supply or rearrange the innards of my computer in some way is probably a no go.

I’m especially hoping for specific recommendations, but absent that some tips on what to look for when it comes to specs would also be appreciated; I’m pretty much flying blind here.

A sincere thank you in advance for any help that can be offered.
64 X2 Dual-Core 5000+ 2.6 GHz
3 GB RAM
Vista
Power Supply capacity of 300W

2

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but the Radeon 4650 is going to be the fastest card in your price range. The Sapphire card is $55 shipped, before the $15 MIR card. The XFX Radeon 4650 is a bit more at $60 shipped, before the $10 MIR card. The XFX version would be faster (same core graphics chip, but with faster memory on the card) and has a double lifetime warranty, vs the 2 year warranty on the Sapphire card.
Either one would be able to play the games you mentioned quite well, and can handle any current game at reasonable resolutions and settings.

3

An AMD Radeon 5450 is the best still-at-retail card for your budget, but it isn’t plug-in-play. You’d need to slide it into the PCIe slot, boot into safe mode, remove the nvidia driver, then install the AMD driver. If you find another $10, you’d get far more performance out of a Radeon 4830.

If you get an Nvidia card, you might be able to literally just remove one and install the other, but you’ll need to step down in performance to a GT 220. But seriously, the 4830 dominates everything in this price range. It’s worth taking the 3 minutes longer to install.

4830 kills the 4650 too.

4

You are right the Radeon 4830 is quite a bit faster than the 4650; didn’t realize that the price had dropped that close to the Radeon 4650; cheapest one Google can find is at Newegg for $67 shipped.

And for any video card install, you will probably have to uninstall your current video drivers, turn off the computer, install the new card in a PCI-E slot, turn the computer on and then install the drivers for the new card. Granted for an Nvidia card you might be able to skip the uninstall current drivers part, too bad Nvidia doesn’t really have any good cards at this price range.

And for the record, the Radeon 4650 is quite a bit faster than the Radeon 5450.

5

The 4830 also requires a 6-pin power connector and 450W power supply.

6

Thanks for the responses so far.

I don’t mind installing/uninstalling drivers; by plug & play I mostly meant that I didn’t want to mess around with the hardware beyond what’s absolutely necessary.

I notice that almost all of the cards that have been mentioned have recommended power supplies of 400W+. Is that something that one can fudge on? If so, to what degree?

7

No. You actually want to have about a 20% reserve to avoid stressing/overheating the power supply.

8

If you have a dedicated 18+ amp 12v rail for it, you’ll be okay. That’s pretty unlikely if you’re under 400W though. If you have a single 25A 12v rail, and everything else draws less than 100W, you’ll be okay. That’s also pretty unlikely. If you have an older, unused computer, you could pull out the PSU and then be cheeky by shorting the green and black wires on the 20-pin connector and then use it as a dedicated power supply for a 4830.

You should post your system’s model number.

9

Gateway GT5654.

10

Not by a whole lot, unfortunately. It is possible to squeak by on a bit less if you use an energy-efficient CPU, but for your base configuration I get a recommended wattage of about 280W with a Radeon HD 4830 installed, and that’s with one harddrive and one DVD drive selected, so I probably wouldn’t take the chance on an aging 300W power supply.

Here’s a power calculator where you can select your exact specifications and see what effect different upgrade options will have, I only went with a basic system so your power usage may vary. http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

11

No way you’re going to be running a 4830 on that thing, which is a shame since it’s rather insane on the price/performance scale. You’re in a bad spot here. You’ve got a budget system and no budget. I’d either go with the Radeon 4650 that RandomLetters mentioned or push your budget up to $65 for a Radeon 5570, if you can swing that.