Ugh, I had that problem with the case being too small for a replacement
power supply with my first computer years ago but that one was an ancient
(1993) and tiny Packard Bell so I'd hoped I'd avoided the problem this time
around. I did notice that the power supplies I was pricing at newegg.com did
look sort of big. My case is L:16.55 W: 6.88" H:14.5 (in inches)

 I'm hoping  to be able to play some games a little more smoothly,like Sims2
and the upcoming Black and white2. It runs ok on my machine now but the
video memory is too low and is taken from system memory on top of it.

Julie Bray


----- Original Message -----
From: "John Sproule" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 8:12 AM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Video card/power supply questions


> Sounds like your Compaq is a micro-ATX board and the power supply is
> likely
> to be a smaller micro-ATX power supply, compared to the dimenstions of a
> standard ATX P/S.  This will be your limitation when looking to upgrade
> your
> power supply, it will need to have external dimensions that will fit into
> your case.
>
> 220 watts is not a lot by today's standards, but it is fairly typical for
> a
> micro-ATX system.  I wouldn't think that you would have much trouble
> upgrading to the the MX4000 card from the Geforce2, but this is because
> the
> chipset is essentially the same.  Although Nvidia calls these MX cards
> Geforce4s, this is rather misleading.  The feature set is the same as for
> the Geforce2s.  The MX4000 does have faster clock speeds than the original
> Geforce2s, I believe; so, it will be somewhat faster, but I wouldn't
> consider it s substantial upgrade.
>
> Perhaps you could say a little about what computer uses are prompting you
> to
> think about a new video card, and folks here could suggest whether or not
> the cards you are looking at will get the job done for you.  Just as a
> general comment, unless you are playing computer games that require 3D
> rendering, chances are that the Geforce2 will be fine for desktop
> applications.  What it lacks are the hardware capabilities for the latest
> 3D
> rendering bells and whistles found in DirectX 8 and 9, especially the
> various new shader technologies.
>
> John Sproule

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