Three bits of advice:

Make sure your system really does have a PCI-E x 16 slot (different from x8, 4, and 1 slots).

Make sure your power supply is strong enough to handle the card you get -- the 8800 is a real power hog, as well as...

Make sure you have room in your case for the card, since the 8800 is also a huge space hog -- depending on the motherboard arrangement you may have to plug your HD into a different slot (my 8800 hangs over half my SATA ports, and naturally my HD used to be plugged into one of the ones its using!). If its going to end up hanging over your memory stick slots, that's a huge issue -- and I know there are some cases where they had to mod their slots because the little "tag" (switch, whatever its called) thing at the end (that locks the card in place) was what was in the way.

He ment the power supply (PSU) inside your computer. You should see 400W or something in it's labels.

EDIT: Also, there are power supply calculators that you can google to see if it's enough.

My suggestion is the ATi 4850, hands down the best price/performance you're going to find.
It requires a 450watt power supply with a 6 pin PCI-E connector.


FYI: PCI-E 2.0 cards are backwards compatible with PCI-E 1.0 slots.

I've had this computer for over a year, so my guess is that I got a reasonable power supply. How do I check, though, the exact specs of my power supply? do I need to go and physically see the part, or can I find the information somewhere on my computer, like in Device Manager or something?

Nononono...

400 watts for an 8800 is a death wish. You'll be skating on ridiculously thin ice plugging it in, much less turning it on. I'd recommend something over 530 watts to preserve the integrity of other components.

If you're going to get the 4850s, you may as well wait a little while and get the even better 4870s.

But if you have the cash, go ahead. Just be warned, if you see a 8800GTS 320 or 640, avoid them at all costs. They're based on an older, slower, core.

8800 GTS 640

While this may look cool and has had a recent price drop, avoid it at all costs.

MSI 8800GTS 512

I'd definitely recommend this, even though it doesn't look as cool or the cooling isn't as efficient, it still runs cooler by itself and pushes a lot more graphics power.

Remember, you have to keep all your parts on the relatively same level. If one component isn't as efficient/powerful as another, you're wasting a lot of time. Even if you have a mid-to-high end quad core processor and 4GB of RAM, but a really bad, I don't know, Radeon 9200SE (which could run Sins, but I haven't have time to check), the RAM and CPU will be waiting 50% of the time for the graphics card to redraw the screen to continue. This goes the same the other way, too. The most common bottlenecks are RAM and graphics card. CPU, not so much.

Go for the 8800GTS 512mb (rev92) , if you can afford it.

If not , then go for the 9600GT

I went for a really big psu
I have a GTX8800 and 5 disks in here, with a quad core.
I also fitted one of those zalmans that shows power consumption.
What does the PC sit at? 230w.

To be fair, I havent checked it when running a game.

I know. That is the current problem. I have a nice computer, but the best video card that dell offered us was the Geforce 7300 LE. And this was back in '07, not even '06 when it came out and was labeled as not-for-gaming

I have 2x8800M 512 MB GTX in SLI--the best mobile GPU on the market--and I can run any game with no framerate dropping below 40 on maxed-out settings. Since you have a Dell, I'd recommend ordering your new parts from them. You can get a pretty good deal, they're fully backed with a warranty, and, if you consult with a specialist who has detailed information on your system configuration, compatibility is guaranteed.

No problem. Another idea: since you've got an XPS, you probably have more than one graphics card slot--you may want to look into SLI technology. That's a pretty cost-effective way of increasing your graphics performance. I can help out with that because I set up SLI on my XPS laptop. You should check and see whether your current card is SLI-compatible--if it is, you could probably save money by ordering a duplicate card and connecting them through an SLI bridge. You could increase performance in this way by upwards of 85%.

But yeah, for a Dell owner, your best option would be to talk to someone over there about how best to upgrade your system. In my experience (this is my third Dell PC and the fifth that I've worked on in my house, not counting at work) Dell will be very helpful if you let them know you want to order a new part from them, and go out of their way to make sure it works.

Well, compatible for Vista is not a worry with modern video cards -- if its not compatible for Vista, its not high-end enough to be worth paying money for unless you really, really need desktop graphics. Anyway, I'd look at something a little higher end than that, unless its a budget issue.

is NVidia more compatible with Dell (specifically the XPS 410) than ATI is?

There is no "compatibility" problem with video cards, there is no video card "specifically made" for Dells.

Video cards are video cards.

If you have $50 to spend, get the 8600GT/8600GTS.
If you have $130 to spend, get the 9600GT.
If you have $150 to spend, get the 8800GT.
If you have $200 to spend, get the 4850.

That's all it really comes down to. And get a new PSU too.