First post, by Sedrosken
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I recently acquired a Dell Optiplex GX150 SFF computer. Before you start hissing and telling me to toss it, consider the following:
- It's in very good condition. Caps look to be in mint condition, minimal cosmetic damage (considering its stint in a public school system) and the fans seem to be in good working order.
- I happen to like the clamshell-era Dells. They're what I grew up with in school (yes, I am still in my teens), so I have a soft spot for them despite their design flaws and whatnot. You call them ugly, I call them ugly-cute. Yes, I've had to work on them before. Yes, it's a pain. No, it does not diminish the love I feel for these machines.
I'm at the stage where I need to come across a video card for it. It should be able to use one given that it has the 815E chipset as Dell says it does, and the integrated 810 video is not my idea of a good time.
I have several options that I could pursue. Normally I'd go for the best card the machine can reliably run, but knowing what I do about bottlenecking... I'm not looking to replace the CPU (at least, not yet) so I'm wondering which of these would be most appropriate for a 933MHz PIII system:
- GeForce 4 MX 440 64MB
- Radeon 7000 32MB
- TNT2 16MB
- Rage 128 16MB
I don't own any of these cards, they're just what I can find for non-astronomical prices on Ebay.
The games I'm looking to run on this thing are of the same era as the machine itself. Perhaps the newest thing I'd consider running on it is Warcraft III, but the newest I'd run with any regularity is Halo 1. I'd figure the GeForce 4 card would be my best bet for those games, but if I should abandon hope of playing them on there I can -- they're those rare games that run perfectly well on my new machines, after all.
Shoushi: Dimension 9200, QX6700, 8GB D2-800CL5, K2200, SB0730, 1TB SSD, XP/7
Kara: K7S5A Pro, NX1750, 512MB DDR-286CL2, Ti4200, AU8830, 64GB SD2IDE, 98SE (Kex)
Cragstone: Alaris Cougar, 486BL2-66, 16MB, GD5428, CT2800, 16GB SD2IDE, 95CNOIE